This is an archive of past discussions about SkyWay Group. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
CRITICISM heading - verified and noteworthy published articles
A wide range of articles have been published critical of the activities of the SkyWay Group and its associates. If these articles are published by verified news senders and raise issues that are from real noteworthy documentation and/or research, and have led to considerable reaction (such as intense interest and discussion, legal threats or litigation against these news portals by the SkyWay Group) then they could be included under a 'criticism' heading. Below you can find translations or summaries of the contents of these articles, followed by the actual proposed text to the criticism heading which can be updated as new criticism is posted.
BURRENBLOG.DE Articles – internet fraud & phishing
There are a large number of publications posted on the Burrenblog concentrating on the possible criminal activities of the SkyWay Group on the internet. A number of these publications have already been references as they’ve been relevant to particular aspects of this discussion (i.e. the Onliner.by articles and court-cases) but references need to be made to individual articles and their contents. Although these articles were originally in German you can receive a cursory Google-translation by choosing your language of choice from the menu to the right.
BURRENBLOG.DE Articles – Internet Fraud & Phishing
SkyWay Capital – ich lass einen Fahren – erste Einschätzung (4 September 2017) I let one down – initial assessment
SkyWay Capital – ich lass einen Fahren – erste Einschätzung
SkyWay Capital – I let one down – initial assessment
4 September 2017
As an initial assessment of the SkyWay investment opportunity being offered, a complete list of missing information which prevents this company from being taken seriously. This list includes a feasibility study, financing plan, price per share, explanations for 32 interconnected companies based in off shore locations, explanations of UN-HABITAT funding. You can see the complete list here:
[1]. His conclusion is that “as a customer you expect detailed information about investing in something that is currently missing from SkyWay”. He further comments on the fact that Kudryashov, a SkyWay Capital operator, was involved in the Russian MMM Ponzi scheme.
Skyway Capital – Skyway Investment Group – Eurasian Rail Skyway Systems Ltd. – der Faktencheck – Teil 1 (25 November 2017 ) Fact Check – Part 1
Skyway Capital – Skyway Investment Group – Eurasian Rail Skyway Systems Ltd. – der Faktencheck – Teil 1
SkyWay Capital – Skyway Invest Group – Eurasian Rail SkyWay Systems Ltd. – Fact Check – Part 1
(25 November 2017)
This article includes a list of lofty claims that SkyWay makes about itself such as its value being 400 billion dollars. You can view the article here: [2] . Proof is provided of dubious payment providers, banks and firms (such as Transtech OU – Tallinn) who function to collect investors’ money. It also covers the internet troll campaign by Chris Schuster and various sock-puppets, including the posting of defamation videos.
Skyway bei einer Lüge erwischt? (10 December 2017) Skyway caught in a lie?
Skyway bei einer Lüge erwischt?
Skyway caught in a lie?
(10 December 2017)
[3]
This concerns a claim that SkyWay has entered a preliminary agreement of 8 billion US dollars for a SkyWay rail-based transport company with Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. It seems unlikely because Germany railway has signed a real deal for 12 billion based on existing infrastructure. Here the company seems to “pretend incorrect facts to encourage the sale of shares”.
Skyway Eco Park Minsk – „Vorteile“ eines Unfalls bei Skyway (18 December 2017) "benefits" of an accident at Skyway
Skyway Eco Park Minsk – „Vorteile“ eines Unfalls bei Skyway
Skyway Eco Park Minsk - "benefits" of an accident at Skyway
(18 December 2017)
You can see the original here and read a translation in your language of choice by choosing from the menu on the top right: [4]. This post comments on the way an accident which occurred at the EcoTechnoPark on 17 December 2017 is spun into a positive event on Yunitskiy’s website. Apparently this accident “confirmed a number of other significant features of the SkyWay transport systems in terms of their safety”. It would be negligent to conclude from an accident which seriously wounded passengers and drivers, that a technology is safe; this they do nonetheless.
Das Skyway-Projekt – das Phantasialand der Träumer und Gutgläubigen? (5 January 2018) Fantasyland of dreamers and the gullible?
Das Skyway-Projekt – das Phantasialand der Träumer und Gutgläubigen?
The Skyway project – Fantasyland of dreamers and the gullible
(5 January 2018)
This is the translation of the Onliner.by article “I leech from pyramids…” which documents the pyramid marketers who are employed at the central offices in Minsk, Belarus. You can view the original here (https://tech.onliner.by/2017/09/11/skyway), but this version includes additional annotation and is instantly translatable into your language of choice: [5]. Note that it mentions here specifically that “Cooperation between the United Nations and SkyWay was discontinued after a short time, and the victorious UN grant had to be abandoned”. We are still looking for confirmation, however, that they ever got this grant and what happened to this money.
Medienberichte über Skyway Capital – gekaufte Sendezeit über DMD auf RTLZ? (20 January 2018) Media reports about SkyWay Capital – did they purchase airtime during DMD on RTLZ?
Medienberichte über Skyway Capital – gekaufte Sendezeit über DMD auf RTLZ?
Media reports about SkyWay Capital – did they purchase airtime during DMD on RTLZ?
(20 January 2018)
This article concerns criticism of the Dutch TV-show “Doe Maar Duurzaam” [‘just act durably’] which uses promotion directly from SkyWay as if it is fact. You can view the article here: [6]. The author sent a list of questions to the TV-broadcaster and the makers of the TV-show. They still haven’t received an answer to these questions. If you want to view a piece of SkyWay self-promotion in Dutch, you can view it here: [7].
Skyway Deutschland – die anomale Kriegsführung eines Chris Sch. (9 February 2018) Skyway Germany – the anomalous warfare of Chris Schuster
Skyway Deutschland – die anomale Kriegsführung eines Chris Sch.
Skyway Germany – the anomalous warfare of Chris Schuster
(9 February 2018)
This specifically targets the extended campaign of bluster directed against the Burrenblog by Chris Schuster and sock-puppets who direct aggression at the authors without actually providing any arguments to support their claims. You can view the article here: [8]. Their conclusion is you can’t trust any MLM-scheme that directs such aggression towards anyone who questions it; readers are advised to avoid SkyWay Germany.
Mobilität von Morgen – Skyway nicht erwähnenswert und keine Mobilität von Morgen (11 February 2018)
The Mobility of Tomorrow – Skyway not worth mentioning
Mobilität von Morgen – Skyway nicht erwähnenswert und keine Mobilität von Morgen
The Mobility of Tomorrow – Skyway not worth mentioning, and no mobility of tomorrow
(11 February 2018)
You can read this post here: [9] It concerns a 50-minute broadcast on Arte promising means of transport highlight advantages and disadvantages of means of transport such as Musk’s ‘Hyperloop’. You can actually see this documentary here on YouTube: [10]. It discusses all major forms of transport, but it doesn’t mention SkyWay despite the fact that company is supposedly worth 400 billion, has been around for 40 years and has thousands of investors around the world.
Skyway – tote Investoren, tote Lizenzen und tote Zertifikate? (13 February 2018) dead investors, dead licenses and dead certificates?
Skyway – tote Investoren, tote Lizenzen und tote Zertifikate?
Skyway – dead investors, dead licenses and dead certificates?
(13 February 2018)
This article is an interesting exploration of deliberate obfuscation of information relating to the certification of SkyWay technology. You can view the original here: [11]. In this article documentation from Russian licencing agencies is questioned. They comment on the dead investors mentioned in the Geldthemen.de article (which you can view here: [12]) but this article focuses on the registration of companies which supposedly certified SkyWay technology. On investigation, the certification institute appears to shares its address with 44 other shell companies. The company which has supposedly issued this certificate, however, is not actually registered at this address. The only company which is connected to science or research of any kind (ZAO NIIGET) was liquidated by the state in 2016 because of irregularities in the issuing of certification. According to Van Burren this is an attempt to obfuscate the origin of certification which is still used to justify a technology to attract small investors. The information was passed to the Attorney General’s Office in Moscow.
Skyway Deutschland – Größenwahn ist keine Maßeinheit! (10 March 2018) SkyWay Germany – Megalomania is not a thing!
Skyway Deutschland – Größenwahn ist keine Maßeinheit!
SkyWay Germany – Megalomania is not a thing!
(10 March 2018)
You can view this article here: [13]. SkyWay apparently claimed that SkyWay technology had been certified by TÜV (‘technical inspection society’ of Germany; a regulatory and certification agency) and approved. After posting the supposed existence of this certification, they didn’t upload the actual docuemnts. If you enter the certificate number into the database of the TÜV, no results were returned. It can therefore be assumed that this certification was never issued.
DELFI Articles – SkyWay in the Baltic Countries
Delfi (web portal) is a major internet portal in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania providing daily news and ranking as one of the most popular websites among Baltic users. In addition to the sites in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian, this news sender also has sites in English and Russian which actually post different articles related to issued deemed significant to the Baltic states. A large number of articles were published after SkyWay started its activities in Lithuania and attempts were made to canvas Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian citizens to fund SkyWay projects. A list of these articles are included below with summaries of their contents and the translations of significant articles.
At the moment there is only one article in Estonian on the Delfi news portal. It concerns the Dubai project information about which was releaed in the form of a tweet. You can read the original here [14] which translates to “Dubai announced the construction of a 15-kilometer skyscraper suspension system”. Since this article concerns only the tweet and doesn’t provide any additional information, specific to Estonia, a translation is hardly necessary.
DELFI.EN – The DELFI SkyWay Articles in English
Lithuanian PM says investment project near military airport to be stopped (17 September 2014)
Local government bans Avia Solutions Group from settling near NATO airport (23 January 2015)
Although this article concerns another company, is does mention the fact that a Russian company was stopped from founding near a NATO based because of changes in legislation which had resulted from the Siauliai scandal. See the original here: [19]
DELFI.RU – SkyWay Articles in Russian
Центробанк Литвы: в деятельности Юницкого есть признаки мошенничества (25 September 2014) Central Bank of Lithuania: there are signs of fraud in the activities of Yunitskiy
Центробанк Литвы: в деятельности Юницкого есть признаки мошенничества Central Bank of Lithuania: there are signs of fraud in the activities of Yunitskiy
(25 September 2014)
”The control service of the Central Bank of Lithuania is completing a survey on what the creator of "string transport" Anatoly Yunitsky is doing, promising a fabulous investment Šiauliai…”
История шяуляйского "струнного транспорта": Юницкий стал подозреваемым (25 March 2015) History of Šiauliai "String Transport": Unitsky became a suspect
История шяуляйского "струнного транспорта": Юницкий стал подозреваемым
History of Šiauliai "String Transport": Unitsky became a suspect
(25 March 2015)
”The investigation into the Russian citizen Anatoly Yunitsky is accelerating with his company Rail Skyway Systems Ltd., which caused a commotion in Šiauliai, where he planned to create a string transport laboratory next to the NATO base…”
Rail Skyway Systems не получит 10 млн евро от Литвы (4 January 2019) Rail Skyway Systems will not receive 10 million euros from Lithuania
Rail Skyway Systems не получит 10 млн евро от Литвы
Rail Skyway Systems will not receive 10 million euros from Lithuania
(4 January 2019)
”Lithuanian company of the Russian capital Rail Skyway Systems Ltd., which promised to develop in Šiauliai a project of modern string trains and illegally distributing shares of foreign companies, failed to reclaim more than 10 million euros in compensation…”
There seems to be a great deal of disagreement about the financial aspects of companies in the SkyWay Group which many consider controversial. We need to have economists with knowledge of the way companies work providing input to this page. The German blog geldthemen.de explores this particular aspect of SkyWay, and it has published a large number of articles on this subject. Between October 2017 and November 2018 they published 9 articles focussing on particular aspects of what they interpret as unsupported technology behind a blatant financial fraud. As SkyWay partners began a war on geldthemen.de, they became more critical of them and comment on and analyse the way SkyWay partners use pseudo-arguments, sock-puppet accounts and even dead Russian figures as current investors. I translated the first article which can be viewed below. I’ll summarise the main points from the other articles as well. On request, other translations will follow.
GELDTHEMEN.DE articles – The SkyWay Capital Investment Fraud
If you want to understand the economic and financial background to the SkyWay Group, the first in the series of publications is a good place to start. It was published on the 31 October 2017: [23]. Note that there are a lot of responses to this original post, but the writers argue each and every one in great detail and with patience, even the trolls who attack again and again with a lot of hot air. regurgitated SkyWay promotion and no substance. I’ve included a translation of the most recent argument from March 2019 which is by no means the best but it does summarise the issues discussed in this extremely long blog feed. The nature of these attacks and the fraud aspects of the company become increasingly important in the discussions.
The second article was published on 31 October 2017: [24] The title of this article is “SkyWay Capital Fraud - Illegal, warn financial regulators”. It concerns the warnings released by financial regulatory agencies the world over about the activities of this company. It includes many countries that have not been mentioned on this talk page yet.
The third article concerns an award that SkyWay says it has won. Its title translates to “SkyWay Capital and the International Transport Award ‘Golden Chariot’ – a fake?” and you can view it here: [25]. It concerns primarily the unsupported claims that SkyWay makes about its technology, and in particular the German SkyWay representative Chris Schuster who claimed that SkyWay Capital was awarded the “International Transport Award” from an organisation called ‘Golden Chariot’ that SkyWay is actually the primary sponsor of: “SkyWay Capital is the primary sponsor of the Golden Chariot Award”. It appears that this award is unsupported by the industry.
Their next article was published 27 November 2017 and its title translates to “SkyWay Capital – Reactions to criticism – SkyWay Partner aggressive”. You can view it here: [26]. It concerns in particular the pages and pages of extremely aggressive criticism that was published in reaction to their publications. It concentrates on slander, threats and insults by SkyWay partners, in particular the unsupported rantings of Chris Schuster. It also explores various fake profiles invented on social networks to promote a negative and constant campaign against geldthemen.de, and the legal ramifications this could have for SkyWay. They suggest that people who are cheated by SkyWay Capital should employ a lawyer to get their money back.
Their next article followed two days later on 29 November 2017 and its title translates to “SkyWay Capital Dropouts – doubt and exits resulting from crises of conscience”. Its subtitle continues: “SkyWay partners abandon ship and distance themselves from SkyWay”. You can view it here: [27].
On 17 December 2017 their next article came out. Its title translates to “SkyWay Capital News – New info on the SkyWay Investment Fraud” and you can view the original here: [28]. It concerns in particular the accident that occurred at EcoTechnoPark on 15 December 2017, during which a number of people were injured (some of them badly). Their conclusion is that at the EcoTechnoPark is designed to “keep investors entertained” but that it “does not seem to have any safety features that prevent rear-end collisions and collisions with other vehicles”. They further comment on questionable claims made by SkyWay such as the support of the Dalai Lama for their project, questionable investment programs and appearances on Indonesian & Russian television as potential publicity stunts.
On 23 January 2018 they brought out perhaps their most striking accusation: that the SkyWay Group were using dead politicians as current investors of their projects. The title translates to “SkyWay Capital Lies – The Dead General, the USSR & the UN as investors” and you can view this interesting article here: [29]. The main point they make is that in order to encourage small investors, they need to have important figures who they can claim support their project. They use the example of the governor of Krasnoyarsk region A. Lebed who supposedly funded the Ozyory test project in 2001 which was later deconstructed. According to Wikipedia he died in 2002. The problem, however, is not whether or not he financed this project. He was listed as a founding investor in the First SkyWay Invest Group which was founded at the end of 2014 which means he was investing from beyond the grave. They also claim Soviet Union institutions which no longer exist helped fund their projects, as well as the UN as part of their “residential and settlement program”. There couldn’t find any indication that the UN invested money in SkyWay. Their conclusion is that these are lies to promote investment in Yunitskiy’s technology which has existed for 40 years but has produced no noteworthy results, and that Germans cheated out of their money should seek legal advice. –Zachar (talk) 13:18, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
The article in question [30] includes a screenshot of the list [31] with the caption "First SkyWay Invest Group strickt sich Investoren" which translates (very-badly) to "First SkyWay Invest Group is committed to investors". The archived copy can be found at [32] which is not a list of "founding investors" of "First SkyWay Invest Group". The title "Wer bereits investiert in SkyWay?" translates to "Who already invested in SkyWay?" which implies the claim to have invested in the technology of SkyWay, which predates "First SkyWay Invest Group", and which wasn't always called "SkyWay".
Currently, information about supporters can be found at [33]. In the English version, it is under the heading "Who supported the project?". One of them is described as:
"Alexander Lebed"
"Russian statesman and military leader, commander, Lieutenant-General. Former Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation."
As you can see, there is no problem in acknowledging the former nature of his governor status.
Also, the article you cite is inconclusive as to whether such investments occurred.
"Selbst wenn wir mal annehmen wollten, dass Anatoly Yunitskiy durch Institutionen der ehemaligen sozialistischen UdSSR in irgend einer Form unterstützt wurde, kann man daraus keinesfalls eine Investition in die jetzt existierende und über 20 Jahre nach Auflösung der UdSSR gegründete, rein kapitalistische (und unserer festen Überzeugung nach auf betrügerischen Absichten basierende) SkyWay Unternehmens Gruppe konstruieren."
(Google-translated) "Even if we were to assume that Anatoly Yunitskiy was somehow supported by institutions of the former socialist USSR, it can not be considered an investment in the purely capitalist (and our firm conviction) now existing and more than 20 years after the dissolution of the USSR based on fraudulent intentions) SkyWay Corporate Group."
Why to mill the wind on Wikipedia by baseless fraud accusations referred to mistaken warnings about “stock selling” activities SkyWay never conducted yet? Without understanding the approach of the company to investment raising several organizations hastened to warn about “possible fraud”. Some publications have sightlessly picked up this “sensational story”. As I already mentioned in Lithuania case dedicated chapter of this Talk the only prosecution of that country meticulously digged in SkyWay activities during 3 years but no fraud has been found RZDNOCOURT
Lithuania did not exonerate Yunitskiy after the PGO could not find enough evidence to prosecute his company for being a pyramid scheme and illegally selling worthless investment products. After the Lithuanian Government dismissed Yunitskiy's case against the government, the Bank of Lithuania rereleased their warning to the Lithuanian public about the suspicious activities of this company. The financial regulatory agencies of the other Baltic states (Latvia and Estonia) have also released warnings about this company. I can't find any other single company who has had so many warnings from so many different countries. –Zachar (talk) 22:31, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
This is the text that you posted about the decision of the court in Vilnius to close the pre-trial investigation.
We hereby submit to you as the defense lawyer of A. Yunitskiy and the representative of “Rail Skyway Systems Ltd.” a judgment taken by the public prosecutor of the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office Rasa Miltinyte on the decision to discontinue the pre-trial investigation No. 06-1=00068-14 by virtue of clause 1 part 1 of Article 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Lithuania on the ground that there were not collected the data to prove the committed criminal acts stipulated in part 2 of Article 202, part 1 of Article 202, part 1 of Article 216, part 2 of Aricle 102 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania.
All it says is that they couldn't find enough evidence to prosecute Yunitskiy. It neither exonerates him or suggests they couldn't find any evidence. They just couldn't find enough evidence to prosecute him according to the laws of Lithuania. –Zachar (talk) 23:31, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Again and again, SkyWay doesn’t sell shares. The project development collect money by crowdfunding using convertible notes. There is no fraud. Crowdfunding is applied by multiple venture start ups. What about “Golden chariot” SkyWay has been really awarded GSHAwrd . However no proof of SkyWay sponsorship can be found. As well as the other critics of this German yellow press resource the example of description of accident in EcoTechnoPark that multiplied the “number of injured” (where was only one person 1216) proves its negative intention to harm to the project reputation due to its supposedly engagement or black self-promotion reasons.--George Marshal (talk) 18:38, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Please note that the SkyWay is the primary sponsor of the 'Golden Chariot' award. Like SkyWay, the 'International Transport Award' website uses logos of UN organisations which do not recognize Golden Chariot. The ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railway) has never heard of this award. Here is what Geldthemen has to say about it:
If you look around the website of the Golden Chariot, you will notice the mention of SkyWay Capital as primary sponsor... In terms of its independence and objectivity in awarding, our impression was not positive at all; this Golden Chariot International Transport Award has lost its last shred of credibility.[34]
Please note that according to the SkyWay site three people were injured in the accident which took place on December 17 2017 at the EcoTechnoPark.[35] The onliner.by reference just talks about the driver of the truck who was so seriously injured he was taken to hospital. There were evidently two other people who were injured as well, and it is these people who are being referred to in the Geldthemen.de article you can view here: [36]. –Zachar (talk) 23:01, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
@Kmarinas86:They are in fact very conclusive. They say that these organisations no longer exist today so even if they even once in the past had invested in SkyWay (of which there is absolutely no proof), they certainly aren't today shareholders or investors as they simply no longer exist. The company they are saying it supported by the funding of these defunct organisations was created in 2014, long after the USSR dissolved. How is this inconclusive?–Zachar (talk) 17:40, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
On Page 54 (054en.pdf) of the online preview of the new English edition of Струнные транспортные системы: на Земле и в космосе (String Transport Systems: on Earth and in Space), we see a picture (bottom) with the following caption:
"Krasnoyarsk Krai Governor Mr. Alexander Lebed visited the offical presentation of UST Track Structure test stand. Ozyory, Moscow Region, October 2001"
My guess is that Lebed is the guy with the clearly visible black tie over the white shirt covered with a shiny black jacket, standing to Anatoly's left (our right).
@Kmarinas86:There is a film of them together as well. He was definitely present at the Ozyory test site when they tested the ZiL-truck there in 2001 and he had the very distinct advantage of still being alive. But a photo or film of them being together is hardly proof of anything. I still can't find any actual proof that Alexander Lebed ever invested any money in SkyWay. He is most certainly no longer an investor as he is dead (he died in a helicopter accident in 2002) but SkyWay claim he allocated 300,000 dollars in local government funding in his role as governor of the Krasnoyarsk region. He may well have shook Yunitskiy's hand and said something kind about the project event he attended. And he may conceivably have invested in the Ozyory project, but I'm still unable to find proof of this. What do you think? I'm certainly willing to believe this as he was at least still alive in 2001 when the site was tested, and he did attend the event. But where is the proof that he invested in it? Any help appreciated.–Zachar (talk) 09:16, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
The next publication came out on 10 May 2018 and its title translates to “SkyWay Capital – Experiences, survey – Review by our visitors”. You can view it here: [37]. Readers of this website are given the chance to vote on what they think of the claims SkyWay makes about its companies, including the marketing plans, their website, the business registration etc. Their highest score is 3/10 for their website and films. The rest are lower than 2, overall average is 1.8/10. At least 30 readers individual numerical analysis of SkyWay is included as part of the comments.
Their last article was published on 8 November 2018 and its title translates to “SkyWay Capital – BaFin reacts” and concerns the BaFin warning on SkyWay activities in Germany. You can view it here: [38]. They mention that although the German warning had come at last, it was far too cautious in wording and far too late; but better late than never.
THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE :
SkyWay Capital Invest Test (12 October 2017) – translation of the original geldthemen.de article
1. The company behind SkyWay Capital
2. The business model of SkyWay Capital or the Sky Way Group
2.1. Economics
2.2. Unrealistic promise of return
3. SkyWay Capital Appraisal
3.1. SkyWay Capital progress
3.2. Pretty pictures but technically unrealistic
3.3. The fundraising for SkyWay Capital
3.4. The true goals of SkyWay Capital and SkyWay Invest
4. Investment Warning at SkyWay Invest
4.1. Installment offered
5. Addition to the Illegal Sale of Company Shares by Skyway Capital
5.1 Belgian Financial Market Authority FSMA considers SkyWay Capital to be a pyramid scheme and prohibits its activities
5.2 Lithuania's Financial Market Authority warns of SkyWay Capital and declares it illegal
5.3 Financial Market Authority of Estonia to SkyWay Capital
5.4 Summary regarding missing permits and criminal activities
6. Critical votes pile up - SkyWay recruits aggressively
Commentary by Andreas from 18 March 2019
SkyWay Capital Invest Test
12 October 2017
Title illustration - SKYWAY INVEST GROUP
Nothing is as it appears – keep your eyes on the sale of stock
[translation of text in illustration showing a thief]
Is SkyWay Capital reputable or is it dubious – a fraud and a SCAM? Is it a Ponzi-scheme or a valid investment? For several months now, a group of companies called SkyWay Capital and First SkyWay Invest Group LTD has been attracting attention with massive advertising, unrealistic earnings promises and an unbelievable overall concept. The SkyWay Invest Group appears on social networks and on well-known websites and blogs and tries to attract investors. For these reasons, we are dedicated this article to the company and its concept.
1. The company behind SkyWay Capital
The company construct and the various designations are confusing at first glance. On the one hand we deal with SkyWay Capital (with website under the domain skyway.capital), which, according to the website, belongs to the company First SkyWay Invest Group LTD. On the other hand with the SkyWay Invest Group, with a website under the domain skywayinvestgroup.com and the company name LLC "SKY WAY GROUP" and RSW Investment Group Ltd.
In part, SkyWay also mentions Sky Way Capital Group Companies.
On the website under the domain skyway.capital the following information is provided:
FIRST SKYWAY INVEST GROUP LTD., Address: 239, Regent's Park Road Finchley, London, United Kingdom, N3 3LF, Incorporated under # 9320759
On the website under the domain skywayinvestgroup.com can be found under "About" this data:
Legal name: LLC "SKY WAY GROUP"
Legal address: Russia, Kemerovo region, Novokuznetsk, Avenue Kurako, House 12-11
PSRN: 1144217005140
ITN: 4217164442
Bank name: "Novosibirsk" JSC "Alfa-Bank", Novosibirsk
And to further complicate the view, additionally:
RSW Investment Group Ltd
Company Registration No.: 1837608
Legal address: British Virgin Islands, Tortola VG 1110, Road Town, PO BOX 2283
In summary: We have companies in Russia, in the UK and on the Virgin Islands, which are two LTDs and one LLC. All easy and without the fulfillment of special conditions to be found. From a corporation no trace.
2. The business model of SkyWay Capital and the Sky Way Group
First Skyway Invest Group Ltd announces the development of a revolutionary new transport system. It is a high-speed system that transports people and goods via special routes with a maximum speed of up to 500 km / h. This supposed future technology is estimated at $ 400 billion. By whom, Skyway Invest does not say.
2.1 Economics
The SkyWay transport technology should be 10 times more economical than the conventional transport systems. We think that is highly unbelievable. At least SkyWay is unable to substantiate that credibly.
2.2 Unrealistic promise of return
If the concept seems unlikely from a technical point of view, you'll be amazed at what investors are promised to get on board. SkyWay Capital spends up to 1,000% return on small investor leases. But these returns are absolutely dubious, even if they are made by a company that intends to actually build tracks and trains. The latter we consider here but excluded.
3.1 SkyWay Capital assessment
So what about SkyWay Capital, judging by everything we know? First of all, you should know that elevated railways, cable cars and suspension railways are not exactly the latest technology. There can be no question of innovation and progress. Nevertheless, SkyWay Capital would like to persuade the investors to have developed something very special. But what did the Skyway Group actually have to offer so far? Basically nothing.
Anyone looking for serious SkyWay construction sites will probably search in vain. Apart from a lot of talk, plenty of announcements and a lot of advertising material, SkyWay has not done anything. Although SkyWay has been collecting money for some time now and although it has reportedly been working on the project for almost 40 years, there is no noticeable progress. Since you hardly have anything to show except a balancing machine, you just turn over a video and present this machine as absolute high technology. Otherwise, the usual SCAM tactics of deceleration and in-the-length-pulling is used. After all, you want to collect as much money as possible from good faith investors for as long as possible.
3.2 Pretty pictures but technically unrealistic
[sleek computer-generated image of 3 skyway vehicles]
TEXT: That the SkyWay rails are too thin and too weak, you can even assume as a layman.
The pictures may look pretty, but they seem rather unrealistic. Static, that should bring some problems. The trains, trains, ride partly on such thin, unsupported rails that they would inevitably have to bend through. At the cable cars it looks almost worse. In practice, this should hardly work.
3.3 The fundraising for SkyWay Capital
[more futuristic images of SkyWay vehicles on tracks]
TEXT: The substructure under the rails is too weak. So the rails can hardly carry the trains
Obtaining funds for SkyWay Capital is anything but the usual approach of a technology startup. It would also be absolutely unrealistic to collect money from millions of small investors, if this money costs so much. Any company that raises funds would try to get cheap money. A company whose revolutionary technology is conquering the world and almost guaranteed billions in profits could not save itself from big investors. Loans would be comparatively cheap in the current low-interest phase. Of course, only if the banks and lenders can be convinced of the concept. This can probably be excluded here.
3.4 The true goals of SkyWay Capital and SkyWay Invest
[computer generated image of a SkyWay vehicle]
TEXT: Again, a SkyWay Capital Bahn on thin construction
We are convinced that the actual concept of SkyWay Capital is based on one goal only, that is to collect as much money as possible from as many people as possible. In fact, nothing is being developed. The so far "progress" is a mask of glitter, with which one would like to offer the investors something. However, we keep what is offered for extremely amateurish and implausible.
4 Warning about investing in SkyWay Invest
To be clear, we are convinced that at SkyWay Capital we are dealing with SCAM, fraud and rip-off. We specifically warn against investing in SkyWay Capital. We estimate the probability of a total loss here very high. So look up when buying a share, especially if there are no stocks at all and they are only offered in an indeterminate future. Here, a fictitious business model is presented to lure inexperienced investors and encourage them to raise money. We have had similar experiences on several occasions with snowball systems already collapsed, such as Recyclix or Right Rise.
4.1 Installment offered
Particularly perfidious for us is the fact that by offering an installment plan people want to move to create that can not afford such facilities.
5. Addition to the Illegal Distribution of Company Shares by Skyway Capital
To the best of our knowledge, SkyWay Capital has not provided or requested such approval in any jurisdiction in which the offering and sale of Company Shares requires the approval of the relevant Financial Market Authority. This makes SkyWay Capital's activities illegal in these countries! This applies to countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but also to most other countries in Europe and the world. The financial market supervisory authorities of Belgium, Lithuania and Estonia have already reacted.
5.1 Belgian Financial Market Authority FSMA considers SkyWay Capital to be a pyramid scheme and prohibits its activities
The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) has stated that SkyWay Capital has not been authorized to offer shares in Belgium and that the company may not offer these shares in Belgium. In addition, the FSMA states that SkyWay Capital has the characteristics of a pyramid scheme and that it therefore considers it fraudulent. Here is the wording of the relevant passages from the declaration in English:
22 September 2017
SkyWay Capital, a company apparently registered in Belarus, is offering its shares to Belgian investors. However, it is doing so without having published a prospectus approved by the FSMA. The company in question is not allowed to offer its shares in Belgium.
Moreover, the scheme proposed by SkyWayCapital has the characteristics of a pyramid scheme. More information about this form of fraud is available on the website of the FSMA.
5.2 Lithuania's Financial Market Authority warns of SkyWay Capital and declares it illegal
The Financial Market Authority of Lithuania also warns against SkyWay Capital and explains its illegality: Here is the statement of the Bank of Lithuania:
August 23, 2017
The Bank of Lithuania has recently noticed intensified activities of the SkyWay group, encouraging investing in this group’s projects. Our advice is not to be drawn in by the proposals of SkyWay, as this may lead to investors losing their funds.
As early as in 2014, the Bank of Lithuania established that the company Euroasian Rail Skyway Systems Ltd, registered in Great Britain, was publicly offering its securities without necessary permits in Lithuania. To protect the interests of investors, the Bank of Lithuania has issued a public warning, transferring information on the Company’s illegal actions to the Prosecutor General’s Office. In addition, it has advised the Financial Market Supervisory Authority of the United Kingdom thereof.
Nevertheless, companies within the SkyWay group or their representatives keep issuing invitations, in various ways, to finance unclear projects, promising “quick and easy benefits”. It is now being proposed to invest in the projects of the private limited company First SkyWay Invest Group Limited through acquisition of its shares. Information for potential investors is being distributed through social networks, via invitations to project presentations, providing information on the Company’s website in Lithuanian, etc. The Company is presented as a prospective start-up company, which collects funds from potential investors (as stated, not publicly and only from professional ones) to finance its projects.
The Bank of Lithuania warns that it has issued no permits for First SkyWay Invest Group Limited to publicly offer its securities in Lithuania or provide related services. No decisions or permits of the supervisory authorities of other European Union countries, granting the right for the companies of First SkyWay Invest Group Limited or their representatives to raise funds in Lithuania, have been received either.
5.3 Financial Market Authority of Estonia to SkyWay Capital
The Financial Market Authority of Estonia (Financesinspektsioon Estonia) also warns and declares SkyWay Capital's activities illegal:
April 24, 2017
Finantsinspektsioon (the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority) would like to inform investors that according to Finantsinspektsioon ́s knowledge First SkyWay Invest Group LTD (https://skyway.capital/) has turned to Estonian population and offered them for purchase its ́ shares. First SkyWay Invest Group LTD has not submitted to Finantsinspektsioon documents required for public offering of securities
and therefore is not authorised to publicly offer securities in Estonia.
The list of companies authorised to provide investment services in Estonia, but also the list of registered prospectuses can be found on Finantsinspektsioon’s web page
http://www.fi.ee
5.4 Summary regarding missing permits and criminal activities
To put it bluntly, SkyWay Capital is acting illegally not only in those countries whose financial market supervisory authorities have pointed it out, but in all countries where it would require a license to offer and sell shares. It should be emphasized, however, that in particular the Belgian Financial Market Authority points out that SkyWay Capital has typical features of a pyramid scheme and the Financial Market Authority of Lithuania, Bank of Lithuania, found it necessary to inform the Attorney General about the illegal activities of the company.
6. Critical voices piling up - SkyWay recruits aggressively
(Update 27 November 2017) The critical voices to SkyWay are getting louder, the number of enlightening articles is steadily increasing. Anyone searching for terms such as "SkyWay Capital Fraud", "Skyway Capital reputable", "SkyWay Capital Experience" or "SkyWay Capital Scam" on Google or other search engines will find a multitude of critical articles and discussions. Anyone who wants to know if SkyWay Capital is going public or how likely it is to go public on SkyWay should read the critical articles on SkyWays Capital. All positive reports on SkyWay Capital are content from advertisers, affiliates who partner with SkyWay Capital, who promote their investment in the company by receiving a share of the investment they receive from them.
Due to the critical reporting on SkyWay Capital, the profits for the SkyWay partners, i.e. the advertisers apparently go back strong. As a result, these advertisers are extremely aggressive in their response to criticism and critics, and do not shy away from slander, counterfeiting, insults and threats. So u.a. publicly called on Facebook to "pass by" individual critics at home. It is clear that such statements are to be regarded as criminal and what is to be kept by the group of people who express themselves in this way.
DISCUSSION:
Andreas 18 March 2019
"Time will decide", "Time will tell" and the like is always heard by ignorant sales partners when they have no arguments and are hopelessly defeated in a discussion. In doing so, the losing ones, as a last resort, finally try to make the discussion seem like a preliminary draw to work towards a wait-and-see approach.
But no, your statement is not correct or only conditionally. After all, it has long been shown and decided what SkyWay Capital really is all about. And of logic, mathematics, arguments and tangible facts. Out of the mouse. There is nothing to wait for. SkyWay is scam. This has more than sufficiently been proven and proven. Examples?
Crowdfunding is illegal (say all European financial market supervisors who have dealt with SkyWay and also says the International Association of Securities Commissions)
SkyWay is a pyramid scheme (also say the European Financial Market Supervisors that have dealt with SkyWay and also says the International Association of Securities Commissions)
Around half of the collected money is paid directly as commission to the advertisers. This is proven by the SkyWay marketing plan). Of the remaining half of the money, the investor-bankrupt parks, the pretty vehicle models, trade fairs, bribes for third-world government officials, gifts for politicians and public figures to photograph with SkyWay representatives will pay for many animated self-produced video, for TV broadcasting time, paid articles in second and third-class magazines etc from. What remains then, the masterminds of SkyWay Capital pull themselves under the nail. Or does anybody who understands that they just do not grab the honey pot? That would not be just naive, but extremely stupid.
◾ There are no outstanding patents. For the most part, these are either design patents, expired, non-extended patents, or those that are irrelevant.
◾No any of the alleged preliminary contracts (such a preliminary contract was never shown), with which SkyWay boasted became a real contract. On the contrary, most of them have turned out to be pure fantasy contracts and dissolved in the air.
◾The SkyWay lie that Soviet institutions that have not existed for nearly 30 years and Russian personalities who died long before SkyWay Capital was founded would be SkyWay Capital investors. (Uncovered here on geldthemen.de)
◾SkyWay lends itself to anonymous backers and fake websites Transport Awards (Also revealed here on geldthemen.de)
◾SkyWay advertises a TüV certificate (ISO-9001), which, however, has no technical or business relevance, meaning that it is completely useless and can basically be obtained by any company. Quotation ISO-9001: "The test mark does not apply: for the quality of the products and services in itself."
Of technical inadequacies and absurdities I do not even start. But the listed points should probably more than clearly prove what SkyWay really is, namely a deliberately planned, large-scale fraud.
And the masses believe the critics all this, apparently. Because at least in Germany, Austria and Switzerland hardly anyone can be trapped. The whining also the sales partners in the relevant groups and opposite their Upline. "Because of the many negative reports, you can not advertise anyone". SkyWay ScamWay blew up and that's a good thing!
And yes, I know that here again maybe a lesser used, underexposed Keuler, who exaggeratedly overestimated his intellect, will open, to assert "What you have enumerated in point X is wrong! I refuted that SkyWay Capital is a fraud ". Preventive: No, denying something is not a proof and refutes nothing at all. No, even if individual points were refuted, which had never happened before, the remaining points would still prove that there is a scam here.
It is striking that SkyWay are STILL claiming today that Alexander Lebed who allegedly helped fund the SkyWay test site in Ozyory in 2001 (but who died in 2002) is a current shareholder of a SkyWay Group company. Check this list published by SkyWay: [39]. Here is again a link to the German article which questions the validity of many of these claims, such as the UN investment or defunct ex-soviet organisations: [40] –Zachar (talk) 13:18, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
You could conceivably add the following sentence to the marketing discussion on dishonest marketing practices:
...The official SkyWay list of current shareholders also includes defunct Soviet Union organisations and the Russian politician Lebed who died in 2002[41][[42].
The descriptor on the Skyway-Uk webpage [43] is '"Who has already invested in the development of technology SkyWay" and is expressed in the past perfect tense, so time is not specified beyond the fact that it happened prior to some event (namely in this case the time in which this information was posted). The descriptor (in bold) clearly is what is meant by the page's title "Our shareholders". This is very different than the paraphrase you came up with.
You could also ask yourself the question as to what happens to one's stock holdings after one dies. Is that a reason specifically to cast doubt that the investment ever occurred? Is that to say the investment is lost and there is no beneficiary to receive it? Does it mean the person/institution intended to revoke the investment? Is that to say that a body who refers to such a person or institution as being an investor is somehow lying in that the said person or institution could not be legitimately be described as a shareholder investor, just because they are dead? Estates do exist. The only way to confirm that these claims about past shareholder status are misleading is to find definitive evidence that the investment never occurred or that shares have been taken away from the shareholder or potential beneficiaries - being dead or alive has nothing to do with it.
In any case, until we have reliable, institutional sources which specify notable individuals who are known investors, it hardly makes sense to include speculative information about people/institutions that are "alleged" investors, let alone from non-institutional sources. talk2siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia 02:36, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
@Kmarinas86:Thanks for your contribution! Unfortunately you're a bit mixed up with your grammar. 'Has already invested' is actually in the 'present perfect' tense. Past perfect would be 'had already invested'. Present perfect refers to an event which occurred in the past but that is still true, or something which has recently been completed (but is still relevant to the present moment). 'Has already invested' does not relate to a point in the past, but a point in the present. It means they are still investors today. The page says 'our shareholders'. How can a dead person be a current shareholder? He died in 2002. He couldn't be a shareholder in a company that was started in 2014! The page STILL says he is a shareholder of a company which didn't exist until 12 years after he died. I agree we should find more verified information about this subject but this is something that SkyWay claims about itself and I think such blatant dishonesty needs to be mentioned. I'd also appreciate your opinion on a new heading describing 'litigation'. –Zachar (talk) 08:46, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
ONLINER.BY Articles – claims & controversies
A number of articles were published on the internet by the popular and well-known Belarusian publisher Onliner.by about SkyWay after they interviewed Yunitskiy in 2016 and researched the claims he made about his technology and the testing facility he was building in Marjina Horka at the time. They were written by Constantin Sidorovich and made a series of bold statements about the inventor of SkyWay technology, the exaggerated claims made by the SkyWay Group about this technology, the questionable scientific validity of both this technology its new Belarusian testing facility, and the marketing techniques adopted by these companies to fund themselves. You can uncollapse the heading below to read summaries of the articles and further uncollapse individual articles if no translation is currently available.
The ONLINER.BY Articles – Claims & Controversies
The first article was published on 5 September 2016 and was written by Constantin Sidorovich and its title translates to something like “Elon Musk is bullshit: bring me money – A Belarusian founded ‘a company worth $400 billion’ and is building a ‘superfast’ SkyWay near Minsk”. It concerns the testing facility they were building at the time in Marjina Horka, but the article reveals uncomfortable information about Yunitskiy and his controversial funding schemes. You can read the original here: [44]. Everything from the dubious nature of his science to the questionable sale of shares of offshore companies was brought into focus.
Yunitskiy sued Sidorovich and Onliner.by for damage to his reputation.
Илон Маск — чушь собачья, несите деньги мне (5 September 2016) Elon Musk is nonsense - bring me the money
https://tech.onliner.by/2016/09/05/sky-way
Илон Маск — чушь собачья, несите деньги мне. Белорус основал «компанию на $400 млрд» и строит под Минском «сверхскоростной» Sky Way
5 September 2016
Elon Musk is nonsense – give me the money instead. A Belarusian founded “a company worth $400 billion” and is building a “superfast” SkyWay near Minsk
After the release of the article Onliner.by on the pyramid Kairos Technologies, our readers asked to look at another project, also similar to the high-tech scheme of withdrawing money from gullible people. Frankly, at first glance, SkWay makes the opposite impression and looks like a company of people keen on high ideas, who not only dream of ships plowing the vast expanses of space, but are also trying with all their might to bring the new era closer.
The forces, however, are not used their own ... But first things first. We talked to Anatoly Yunitskiy, an engineer and simply the main person in SkyWay, looked at the company's activities (in fact, the companies that have the SkyWay phrase in their name, a great many are registered, but for convenience we will call them all one organization). We tried to figure out whether we are dealing with a genius inventor, or with a no less ingenious adventurer.
“An iPhone somehow works, but how exactly – you don’t need to know”
It was possible to read about the technology of string transport, which is known under the name SkyWay, in Soviet newspapers and magazines of the 1980s. In general terms, we are talking about the railway, the rails of which, firstly, do without sleepers and, secondly, are elevated above the ground on concrete supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The idea has been worked out by Anatoly Yunitsky, a native of the Gomel region, for more than 30 years, and its author has answers to almost any questions. The main postulates of the Belarusian engineer are as follows: string transport is safer, more environmentally friendly, faster (emphasis is placed on speeds up to 500 km/h) and is ten times cheaper than everything that exists
“We are not interested in which transistors are in the iPhone. This concerns the developer, not the user. Developer, as well as competitors "
“What makes this cheaper?” Through innovative solutions. Here, the iPhone, at the expense of something, works, somehow you drag your finger there, but how it works - you don’t need to know this, you need to know the user characteristics. We are not interested in which transistors are in the iPhone. This concerns the developer, not the user. Developer, as well as competitors. In general, this is not a secret that can be told,” explained Anatoly Yunitsky in an interview with Onliner.by.
A good, interesting, perhaps even a viable idea of a dreamer, read out by books of Cyrus Bulychev. Another thing is that during all this time, people, alas, have not shown a single acting sample of string transport (and we are promised passenger unibuses, cargo trucks, unicars, and unibikes).
Last year, the company rented a 35-hectare land plot near the Marina Horka, a former tank test site on which the whole EcoTechnoPark is being built to demonstrate “ready-made commercial solutions”. We were primarily interested in what an ambitious engineer built near Minsk. Especially since the string transport in action should be shown for the first time in 30 years already this fall.
We arrive at the location. We saw the impression of Potemkin villages. These 18 pillars for a kilometer were buried for almost a year? But Anatoly Yunitsky said that the most effort and resources are taken away not by construction, but by design. He provocatively crunches apples, gently strokes a carrot grown in a container (this is not just a park, but an ECOtechnopark!) And complains about the constant underfinancing.
It is the scheme of collecting funds for the construction of the park in particular, and string transport in general, causes the most controversy and suspicion. Money is collected from ordinary people, in return, they receive "shares" from Euroasian Rail SkyWay Systems Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands (about 40% of offshore companies in the world are based here).
“We are not starting from scratch. Although the real result is not yet "
Pay a dollar for a “share”, and you are promised a profit of over 1000%. Someday - when the whole world will see the light and understand the importance of string transport, and SkyWay will come out for an IPO. By the way, Anatoly Yunitsky estimated his company as much as 400 billion dollars - approximately at the level of Apple!
“I went to an appraisal company and asked to evaluate my intellectual property. Here are my more than 100 patents, 200 scientific papers, two dozen monographs, 40 know-how. They counted (given that we can take a quarter of the market) and said that our intellectual property is estimated at 400 billion dollars. This is the assessment of the business that I do. Of course, this money can be capitalized, but you can not capitalize. That is, yes, it is in some way virtual money. But there are experiments, patents, monographs, etc. Therefore, we are not starting from scratch. Although there is no real result yet,” the engineer does not hide.
Anatoly Yunitsky runs between the long rows of newly planted apple trees. There are many trees here - a few dozen, if not hundreds. They say that they were allowed to plant those who donated at least a thousand dollars to a non-existent string transport. The head of SkyWay promises to erect a monument to the one who "invests" a million. “Are there such people already?” - we are interested. “No, but they will be soon,” the answer follows.
“Elon Musk is a crazy boy from South Africa and a businessman, but I am not”
Even in an article about Kairos Technologies, psychologist Andrei Metelsky gave practical advice: before you give someone money, find out about this person as much as possible.
The story of Anatoly Yunitsky is tangled and complicated. If you believe the inventor, he is constantly deceived, persecuted, robbed and left with nothing. And so for decades according to one scheme: the Belarusian “almost completes” a sample of the string road, then officials or competitors come, select everything, chase Yunitskiy, he again searches for a new country to implement his ideas, starts building there ... and so on in a circle. All this was repeated in Russia, Australia, Lithuania. Now - the turn of Belarus.
- In Russia, my partner was the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Alexander Lebed. He introduced a personal 300 thousand dollars to the project ... Then in Russia the first testing ground was demolished. I went to Australia, but everything was taken away from me and there in 2011. Then I decided to move to a free Europe - to Lithuania. Everything was fine until we bought land in Šiauliai. In the press, they began to call me an international fraudster, the builder of New Vasyukov, a follower of Mavrodi, they said that I had come to strike at NATO and therefore took a piece of land near their airfield. There were articles that it was time to arrest me, that the FSB was behind me. Arrested accounts, property. The procedure for weaning children has begun ... - complains Anatoly Yunitsky.
Lithuania has a different vision of the situation. Last year, the Central Bank of this country stressed that the “inventor” was selling worthless shares, and the Prosecutor General’s Office declared him “suspected of an investigation into fraud, illegal economic, commercial, financial activities and the legalization of funds acquired by criminal means, which is conducted by the Financial Investigation Service of crimes."
I had to flee to Belarus. But relatively recently, when Anatoly Yunitsky had just arrived in Lithuania, his priorities were completely different: “Russia and Belarus are not attractive because of the investment environment, and Lithuania protects the interests of investors. But if we decided to settle in Germany, we would have a strong competitor there, the company Siemens, in France and Japan, has its own fast trains. Why do they need us? I am Belarusian myself, so Lithuania seems to me like an ideal place. ”
- No, and not necessary. Because support will begin - and problems will begin. Naturally, they know about us. First and foremost organs. Of course, after all about 80 thousand people from 78 countries invest in us. Mostly 100-300 dollars.
[Illustration of a map with hundreds of markings attached to numbers] accompanying text: “It is curious that Sky Way cannot officially collect money from Belarusians. Nevertheless, on the map posted on the company's website, Belarus is drowning in numerous multi-colored numbers of investors. Among them there are even famous citizens like Kirill Shimko, on records of which Sky Way likes to promote.”
“My money was never the goal. Elon Musk is a businessman, and I am not! He just has good PR”
But his foreign colleagues, Anatoly Yunitskiy, a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (along with Grigory Grabov, Yuri Kuklachev, Ramzan Kadyrov and other renowned academicians), do not really like it. Elon Musk was especially unlucky.
- He, along with his SpaceX - this is bullshit! And Tesla is also bullshit! They do not solve any problems, because in order for the same electric car to go, it is necessary to burn three times more fuel than the internal combustion engine does. Hyperloop – all of it is crap! Money is stolen, laundered, cronyism flourishes there! There is no project! The idea of putting something in a vacuum tube cannot be called a project. This idea is a hundred years old at lunch. And it was proposed by a Russian scientist, and I have it in my 1985 monograph. We also steal!
Any mention of Elon Musk makes an academic very angry. Anatoly Yunitsky insists that his American colleague has only fantasies, whereas he has a ready-made solution to all major world problems.
- This boy from South Africa just wants to make money, but for me money was never the goal. He is a businessman, and I am not! He just has good PR. If you can attract billions, talking about good goals, then why not voice them? They made Musk a billionaire and promoted the whole development project (SpaceX) - that's all! We do not need space for a hundred years. He is needed for industry, and man is a terrestrial product, and to kill the Earth in order to fly to Mars is complete nonsense! Only crazy people can say that! And everyone shouts: hurray, Musk is a genius! Let's live on Mars! And I say - do not fly anywhere, you must live on the Earth according to the laws of God.
“The whole world is busy planning to destroy me”
Responding to the skepticism of critics of the project, Anatoly Yunitsky likes to draw historical parallels.
- Call at least one invention, taken with a bang. What did Giordano Bruno burn for? And why was the Queen planted? And what's wrong with the inventor of the diesel engine Rudolf Diesel, who was drowned by competitors [there is no evidence that a competitor had a hand in the death of a German engineer. - ed. Onliner.by]? .. The President of Lithuania has publicly stated that I am a Russian spy [we searched for the corresponding quote in the Lithuanian media together with a native speaker and did not find one. - ed. Onliner.by]. The security services, the prosecutor's office, followed me, blocked a million dollars in bills, took everything away ... The whole world is busy planning to destroy me.
Bill Gates hires an aircraft carrier, puts there a couple of hundred programmers and swims into the ocean for six months"
Anatoly Yunitsky diligently creates a veil of mysterious secrecy over Sky Way. In addition to the test site, we also visited the workshop where prototypes of unibuses, unibikes, and other vehicles that must be moved along the strings are constructed.
[photos of parts being constructed for SkyWay vehicles] accompanying text: “We see around the wooden and plastic parts. The biggest thing from plywood can’t be photographed - competitors are not asleep!”
- We have breakthrough technology. Naturally, everyone is interested in how this can be learned, stolen, taken away. Do you think if they come, they will wear it on their hands? No, if they come, they will steal and take away. Take Microsoft and Bill Gates. He does not scream at every corner, saying that we are developing a new program. He hires an aircraft carrier, sits there a couple of hundred programmers and swims into the ocean for six months. Where - no one knows. It takes away laptops, phones, flash drives and returns with the finished product. And that's right, this is business,” explains the inventor.
To clearly illustrate the advantages of strings, the engineer puts two clips on the table, and a third - on top of them. All this should symbolize the traditional trestles. Anatoly knocks on the table. This is probably an earthquake. The design of the three clips did not move a millimeter. Although it probably should have scattered in different directions. Finally, the inventor blows the clips to the floor:
- Here, just got a strong table. And string transport is like a guitar or a balalaika. Shake it, blow it, drop it on the floor, and the strings will not break anyway.
- Why? Sometimes the strings still break. From excess tension at least.
- The example is correct, but not objective. Increase your guitar a thousand times and your hand at the same rate. It will be 500 meters! Dubai skyscraper! Hit the Dubai skyscraper on an existing overpass. What happens?
Anatoly Yunitsky is convinced that his project is unique from all sides. And even the aerodynamics of unibuses is better than that of the Bugatti for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's just the money to translate the idea is not enough, even if your company is worth 400 billion.
Need more money
- We collected 10 million dollars for our program, but for such serious projects it is a penny. We thought that we need at least 300 million. However, we are constantly optimizing costs, and I think that now 200 million will suffice.
It is a pyramidal way to collect money that causes the most questions, because people actually sell the air and at the same time call to replenish the piggy bank by attracting other "investors". Only the referral system, well-known for the same Kairos, allows participants to rely on at least some money. He brought five (ten, fifteen, and so on) people - get your percentage from their contributions and some next title of “manager”.
For some reason, Anatoly Yunitsky does not want to extract the necessary funds, referring to officials thinking only of themselves and wanting to take away all competitors. At the same time, he is not averse to remembering that it was with the support of Russian civil servants that he built a kind of prototype of a string road with a ZIL on iron wheels in the Lakes.
[series of pictures from the Ozyory test site] accompanying text: “this and following photos from Yunitskiy.com website”
Maybe it was worth taking advantage of the famous crowdfunding platforms?
- We have created a platform that is stronger than all the crowdinvesting platforms combined ... We create the largest market in the entire history of civilization, because transport has accompanied us all our lives, from the hospital to the cemetery. Telephones, “iPhones”, computers for newborns, as well as for the dead, are not needed, and transportation is always necessary.
By the way, we still found SkyWay on one of the third-party crowd-investing sites (although the mention of the Russian Simex can often be seen in articles about fraudsters and pyramids). Nevertheless, the project here cannot boast of great success - in three months only about two and a half thousand dollars were collected from trusting Internet users.
[series of pictures from the construction of EcoTechnoPark]
Anatoly Yunitsky always complains about underfunding. This is his main argument in any disputes and issues. It has long been promised to mount string rails, but they are still not there? So, a little finance! Whole year built 18 concrete supports? Need more money! The second most important and frequent reference factor is natural phenomena. The rain has gone - the pit has flooded. Winter has come - everyone froze. How to solve all this? That's right, you need to actively finance. Those who disagree, the Belarusian inventor calls trolls and calls "to go to Hyperloop."
[a series of photos of workers at the EcoTechnoPark site]
We must pay tribute to SkyWay - the “picture” of the company against the background of competitors a la Kairos is good. There is an office where dozens of young people work (judging by the announcements, experience is not needed, salary for a software engineer or developer is $800-1,000), a workshop in which several elderly people glue plywood models of trailers, as well as a polygon with concrete pillars . Is there a lot of money spent on all of the 10 million that Anatoly Yunitsky is talking about? It’s anyone’s guess.
[a series of photos showing Yunitskiy and the office workers]
In the meantime, the Belarusian engineer assures that he will create the world's largest company, which can be compared with Apple and Google. Like, here are examples when, thanks to investments, small firms turned into transnational corporations. It is a pity that at the same time he is silent about the fact that in the case of the two companies mentioned, there is no talk of any “people financing”.
Economist Vladimir Kovalkin: “It doesn’t look like an insignificant way of extracting money”
[photo of an Kovalkin taking a break]
“Both Google, Microsoft, and Apple had working samples. In Apple, a computer was assembled on their knees in the garage, which could be touched, turned on, and finally, with the help of attracting investors, sent to mass production at the factory. So in the case of string transport - you need a working sample that meets all the declared parameters like speed of 500 km/h, safety, cheapness, etc.
Let Yunitsky build at least an amusement road that would connect Minsk and Borisov. That's when such a road will work, then it will become clear how much it all costs, whether it makes sense and whether it is possible to invest money in it. This is the business risk: you invest your own money in the realization of your idea, show how everything works, and prove the possibility of launching mass production.
I don't know, maybe this is really a technological breakthrough. But at the stage of promises of how our ships will travel across the Universe, all this, of course, looks like a pyramid, another fraudulent scheme and not insignificant way to extract money.
[photo of computer-generated city of the future] accompanying text: “Illustration from rsw-online”
Those who invest in this project should remember that it’s difficult to protect your interests in the offshore zone. I think this is a calculation that most people will invest no more than a thousand dollars. And this is not the amount for which, in the event of what, a person will still spend money on tickets to the Virgin Islands and back, hiring a lawyer, court proceedings, etc.
Regarding the share capital and intellectual property of 400 billion dollars. Amounts can be called anything. Now, if Yunitsky had entered the market for an IPO, then they would have seen how much the company actually costs. For now, all these are empty words. ”
Belarusian scientists of the Academy of Sciences: “The so-called string transport is a circus attration”
We have sent all available technical data on string transport to the National Academy of Sciences. In general, the conclusions of academicians coincide with the opinion of their Russian colleagues: there is no practical sense in the ideas of Unitsky.
[photo of Belarusian science academy]
“Everything that we see here is only static calculations. And where are the calculations of the moving load? This is a very old problem that for decades has been solved by outstanding scientists - mechanics, mathematicians, physicists. It is necessary to clearly establish the length of the sag of the rail or, as Yunitsky calls it, the strings, as well as other numerous parameters. Without solving the problem of the dynamic effects of a moving load in a system, dangerous fluctuations may occur that will lead to catastrophic consequences.
What is the voltage of this string? What kind of effort? If you pull the cable, the deflection literally in millimeters causes such loads that no “string” can withstand. To increase strength, it is necessary to increase the diameter. However, if we increase the diameter, the cable itself will be of such a weight ... Mama, don't grieve! And how much metal is required! And what a load on the support!
Before you do something, you need to carefully calculate everything, Everything else is just talk. No such construction is carried out without the most complex engineering, mathematical and mechanical training. Without all this, Yunitskiy’s activities are worthless — these are the Skillful Hands circle and children's toys.
[another computer-generated image]
In addition - security. Imagine that on these pillars the transport will indeed go at a speed of not even 500, but 180 km/h! The area under the supports is still not suitable for any economic or relaxation activities.
The so-called string transport is a circus, an attraction. But even the rides, before being put into operation, must be certified and carefully studied. If Yunitskiy succeeds in conducting real experiments with the conditions and parameters indicated by him, to be certified, then somewhere in the recreation areas his project, it is possible, can be used instead of the cableway. But, again, there are big questions about cost-effectiveness. ”
I want to believe in beautiful fairy tales. It's a shame when dreams are broken about reality and contradictions. And SkyWay, like the statements of the head of the company, is completely woven of contradictions. Anatoly Yunitsky takes offense at Elon Musk for putting his ideas on beautiful promises, and then he himself goes into lengthy arguments about children running barefoot on the grass under stringed roads. Here on the SkyWay website they write about pre-orders for $ 160 billion, and then it turns out that some companies just “showed great interest and are waiting for the certification of the project.” They deny the pyramidal essence in words, but at the same time enjoy the services of a prominent representative of MMM. They talk a lot about absolute safety and immediately brag about an open electric bike that seems to be able to accelerate to 60 km/h. They blame the "dirty" electric motor and the engine, but it seems that one of these types of motors is going to be used in string transport.
Anatoly Yunitskiy launched a wide range of activities, but there is still no result like 30 years ago. Unfortunately we doubt that he will be in the future. Cheap string transport seems to be very expensive, but we can only talk about its speed characteristics while looking at the ZIL crawling along the rails at a turtle speed. And for some reason there is a persistent feeling that the Belarusian inventor will continue to work according to the “build — take away — run away — build again” scheme as long as it brings some money. Well, but you can always look like an oppressed "innovator" who "ignorant people" do not allow to complete the project.
This didn’t stop them publishing information about SkyWay and their next publication concerned the court-case. It was published 3 February 2017 and its title translates to “The author of SkyWay Yunitskiy took Onliner.by to court”. You can view the original hier: [45]. Yunitskiy is documented denying that he is connected to the SkyWay Group in court and cannot explain why his name is on a SkyWay business card. It also contains a lot of confusing answers from Yunitskiy about how his ‘400 billion’ intellectual property was shifted in ownership to his offshore companies.
Автор проекта SkyWay Юницкий подал в суд на Onliner.by (3 February 2017) The author of SkyWay Yunitskiy took Onliner.by to court
Автор проекта SkyWay Юницкий подал в суд на Onliner.by и открестился от группы компаний SkyWay
The SkyWay project creator Yunitskiy sued Onliner.by and disowned the SkyWay Group
3 February 2017
Anatoly Yunitskiy, author of SkyWay, took to court Onliner.by and the journalist who wrote the article, "Elon Musk - bullshit, bring me the money…”. The plaintiff said that the material contains information discrediting his "honor, dignity and business reputation."
During the trial, the plaintiff expressed confidence that the article was customized. “This article was actually made for the marginals, because there were hundreds of comments. We have evidence (if necessary, we will submit to the court) that Onliner deleted all positive comments,” he also said.
What is SkyWay?
Anatoly Yunitskiy claims a lot - more than a dozen claims. In particular, he claims that the article deals with the Belarusian company CJSC String Technologies. To clarify, this company never once appears in the material; instead, it is about a group of companies united by a single SkyWay brand (SkyWay group of companies). The plaintiff, however, insists that it has nothing to do with this group of companies, as well as with their website.
Anatoly Yunitskiy assured the court that the SkyWay group of companies is not a legal entity, but a kind of “interest association”, a club of like-minded people. As for the information on the SkyWay group of companies that the claimant is its president, Yunitskiy insists that this is a “virtual position”.
[Photo illustration from SkyWay website describing the company with a glossy photo of Yunitskiy – president of the SkyWay Group]
Here's how the dialogue of the plaintiff and the representative of the respondent about the attitude of Anatoly Yunitskiy to the SkyWay group of companies took place in court:
Yunitskiy: They took screenshots of sites to which I have no relation, just because there is the name SkyWay. SkyWay has hotels, SkyWay has restaurants, SkyWay is in every country. I am not, say, the head or employee of the SkyWay group of companies. I have nothing to do with them. They came to the office of CJSC String Technologies, where I really work.
[...]
The representative of the defendant [RoD]: Regarding the site rsw-systems.com [on the Internet it is positioned as the official site of the international group of SkyWay companies. - ed. Onliner.by]. You said that you have nothing to do with this site.
Yunitskiy: I do not have.
_
I am not, say, the head or employee of the SkyWay group of companies. I have nothing to do with them.
[RoD]: Why in the details that you specify in the statement of claim, as your email address is given a@rsw-systems.com?
Yunitskiy: I don’t know why there, there is a completely different one ... I’m on my business card, for example ... I don’t know why, I didn’t do it in the bank [further illegible. - ed. Onliner.by].
[RoD]: You have signed a claim where your e-mail address is a@rsw-systems.com.
Yunitskiy: I have a different address, I do not know why it is indicated there. Here is my business card.
[Photo of Yunitskiy in the SkyWay offices]
We add that before the interview and writing the article “Elon Musk - bullshit, carry the money to me…”, the Onliner.by journalist corresponded through a@rsw-systems.com mail with a man who introduced himself as Anatoly Yunitskiy. During the trial, the plaintiff insisted that he did not correspond with the journalist. Who exactly this was is difficult to answer. Nevertheless, the meeting with Yunitskiy was organized and agreed upon as a result of correspondence with an unknown person.
Promotions
The confusing question concerns the shares that people promise in exchange for investments in the SkyWay project. SkyWay group of companies warns that the shares are not sold to citizens of Belarus. At the same time, on behalf of the Belarusian citizen, we made a purchase of the minimum package of shares, in response to receiving a certain electronic certificate, which allegedly certifies the right to the shares of Euroasian Rail SkyWay Systems Holding LTD. It is worth noting that LTD indicates a limited liability company.
[flow-chart of how money flows between SkyWay companies. ERSHH holding is in the middle. It is surrounded by ‘Yunitskiy Corp.’, ‘Global Transport Investments’ and investors. GTI apparently funds the Belarus company ZAO String Technologies; GTI is funded by shareholders.]
TEXT: SkyWay Investment Memo Page
Anatoly Yunitskiy’s opinion on whether Belarusians can buy shares was expressed in court: “It is not prohibited to buy shares. It is forbidden to buy without the permission of the National Bank.”
[photo of Yunitskiy pointing in the air in his offices]
The plaintiff stressed that the purchase of such shares without the permission of the National Bank is against the law. A person who, according to Yunitskiy, violated the law and bought these shares, should be brought to justice.
Investment scheme
Not less confusion with companies that are associated with SkyWay. During the interview, Anatoly Yunitskiy claimed that his intellectual property was valued at $ 400 billion: "This is the assessment of the business that I do." In court, too, we are talking about this amount.
[Photo of a metal ‘SkyWay 2015’ monument showing a globe]
[RoD]: As the share capital of which company was your intellectual property contributed?
Yunitskiy: Global Transport Investments. But it was not me who contributed, no.
[RoD]: And who made it?
Yunitskiy: Why should I tell the whole scheme?
[RoD]: Your intellectual property was included as a statutory fund in Global Transport Investments. How is your intellectual property ...
Yunitskiy: It is not mine anymore. I gave it to another company.
[RoD]: So you transferred it to another company, which, in turn, contributed it to the authorized fund of Global Transport Investments?
Yunitskiy: Yes.
[RoD]: That is, we see that with your participation there is already String Technologies, Inc., some second company that contributed intellectual property as a statutory fund to the GTI ...
Yunitskiy: Part of intellectual property, part of Global Transport Investments, absolutely legal.
[RoD]: And Global Transport Investments where is it registered?
Yunitskiy: In the British Virgin Islands. By the way, through the British Virgin Islands all the Chinese come to the United States.
[RoD]: And the second company where you contributed your intellectual property - where is it registered?
Yunitskiy: This is my company, I don’t want to say.
[RoD]: But you did get permission from the National Bank when you opened this company?
Yunitskiy: You know, can you tell me where the money is? … I did it while in Russia, I was a Russian citizen. Let's ask these questions in Russia.
_
We emphasize that one of the quotations from the article “Elon Musk - bullshit, carry the money to me…” , indicated in the statement of claim expressing the author’s opinion are confirmed by Anatoly Yunitskiy in an interview or numerous videos with him.
_
“You see, can you tell me where the money is? .. I did it while in Russia, I was a citizen of Russia. Let's ask these questions in Russia.”
[Close-up of Yunitskiy arguing his point]
The plaintiff in court has a different opinion:
- I am a scientist and with a worldwide name, so that you know. I will not prove it. Look on the Internet, I have more than 200 scientific publications, look at my inventions, patents, look at my monographs. [...] And look what is written in the article - a swindler, a crook ... And so, yes, I was insulted, I was very insulted.
Anatoly Yunitskiy demands from Onliner.by and a journalist to publish a refutation, remove the article “Elon Musk - bullshit, carry money to me…” and to pay the plaintiff 200 thousand denominated rubles as compensation for moral damage.
Onliner.by waits for a court decision and monitors the situation
The next article concerns the dismissal of Yunitskiy’s case against Onliner.by and its title translates to “The court refused to file the complaint by the RAEN academic Yunitskiy against Onliner.by”. It was published on the 8 June 2017. The point they make with the title is that Yunitskiy openly associates himself with the ‘Russian Academy of Environmental Science’ which is a foundation with a dubious reputation. Sergey Sibiryakov is also documented as a witness who tells flagrant lies in court about the company. Yunitskiy seems unwillingly and evasive if asked about his actual qualifications as an engineer. You can read the original here: [46].
Суд отказал академику РАЕН Юницкому (8 June 2017) The court refused to file a complaint by the RAEN academic Yunitskiy
Суд отказал академику РАЕН Юницкому в исковых претензиях к Onliner.by
The counrt refused to file a complaint against Onliner.by the RAEN academic Yunitskiy
8 June 2017
The court rejected academic of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Yunitskiy’s claims against Onliner.by
Today, the trial ended between SkyWay author Anatoly Yunitskiy on the one hand, and Onliner.by, as well as a journalist who wrote the article “Elon Musk - bullshit, bring money to me…”, on the other. The plaintiff was confident that this material contains information discrediting his “honor, dignity and business reputation.” The court found otherwise.
In the course of numerous court hearings, not only Anatoly Yunitskiy, but also his supporters, expressed their position. We present the most vivid moments of speeches by representatives of SkyWay.
[close-up of Yunitskiy]
String transport - a breakthrough, but foreign media do not write about it?
Sergey Sibiryakov, partner of Anatoly Yunitskiy since 1999, acted as a witness. To the question of the court about the place of work, the man firstly evasively answered “a scientific organization engaged in macroeconomic forecasts,” but after a brief hitch, he clarified what the Association represents in practicing futurology.
[picture of Yunitskiy and Sibiryakov on-site at the EcoTechnoPark]
TEXT: Sergei Sibiryakov – right
Sergei Sibiryakov talked a lot about the prospects that string transport opens up for humankind, and also told what the current SkyWay models are made of: “This is modern technology - plastic, glass”. Also, this practicing futurologist recalled the InnoTrans transport exhibition, which took place last fall in Berlin and in which SkyWay took part. According to him, the samples of string transport made a “serious impression” on the specialists and visitors at the event.
Defendant: Did you see any mention of string transport in the context of your participation in the exhibition in the English or German press?
Witness: Of course! If you followed our sites, you saw that we are following a number of publications ...
Defendant: You may not have understood. I asked about English or German-language publications about your participation in the InnoTrans exhibition.
Witness: The question is not quite clear.
Defendant: Did you see feedback from the local press about SkyWay?
Witness: Following the results of InnoTrans, a very serious work is always published, which summarizes the results of the work ...
Court: Answer the question specifically.
Witness: I answer specifically the question: the most important result of this work is to get into the top 50. All the companies that participate in this exhibition, for them the most important thing is to get into the top 50. We entered this top-50 with a large margin.
Defendant: Did you see in German newspapers and magazines publications about SkyWay on InnoTrans?
Witness: There are a number of reports that were shot by local television ...
Defendant: That is, you haven’t seen newspapers and magazines?
Witness: Probably not. I did not see any.
We’ll specify that we didn’t find any mention of a certain top 50 that all InnoTrans participants dream of getting into. There is no such rating on the official website of the exhibition.
Academic of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Yunitskiy: unibus and unibike are seven times more efficient than Tesla and Bugatti cars
[photo of Yunitskiy on-site at EcoTechnoPark wearing hard-hat and sunglasses]
Anatoly Yunitskiy once again stressed that he has nothing to do with the SkyWay group of companies: “There is no such company, this is a club of interests.”
Also, the author of the idea of string transport recalled the enormous advantages of the unibikes and unibuses invented by him, which someday can replace the existing traditional transport.
- I have assembled the best designers, who design the most sophisticated equipment, the complexity of which is not inferior to airplanes or Tesla cars! According to the characteristics, if you compare with the Tesla electric car, - this is Elon Musk standing behind him, right? - then our unibus, unibike is seven times more efficient. We conduct a serious science, we investigate it. I managed as an engineer, as an inventor, to improve aerodynamics seven times compared with the Bugatti - this is the most expensive car!
However, in addition to beautiful stories about the future, we needed to get answers to several key questions related to the claimant’s claims to the article of the journalist Onliner.by.
Defendant: Did you encourage people to invest in the SkyWay project?
Yunitskiy: Yes. It was in Russia, I did not work in Belarus at that time and was a citizen of Russia.
Defendant: You said earlier that you created the site www.Yunitskiy.com. Who is now administering this site?
[photo of Yunitskiy in the boardroom]
Yunitskiy: I do not have to say, I do not remember.
Defendant: In the appendix to the statement of claim, you indicated several patents. Are they all valid at the moment?
Yunitskiy: How do you understand "valid"?
Defendant: Do they have power now?
Yunitskiy: Well, a patent, firstly, establishes the authorship of an invention, which has no deadlines. There is a patent when the economic component, when it can be violated without sanctions for the one who violated. It does not work now, I do not support them, because now there is no point in supporting them all and paying money for these patents. But they exist and I am their author.
Yunitskiy - Academic of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences: how does the offshore story relate to an interview?
The statement of claim filed on behalf of Anatoly Yunitskiy stated that the article of the journalist Onliner.by, among other things, detracts from the merits of the plaintiff as a scientist. During the trial, we tried to clarify what academic titles the author of the idea of string transport has.
[photo of Yunitskiy on a two person electric wheelchair]
Defendant: Can you name your academic titles, which are documented and issued by reputable institutions?
Yunitskiy: Yes, I have an “Ph.D. of transport” in English, in Russian - a candidate in the field of transport. PhD.
Defendant: Can you name the organization where they are issued?
Yunitskiy: The title was awarded in the aggregate of works. My supervisor and opponent was the vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the general designer of MAZ Vysotsky. And therefore I defended a scientific work in one of the institutes - there is an abstract, there are scientific monographs, there are more than 100 inventions, each of which is a scientific article, and it is even higher in rank than a scientific article. Therefore, by all criteria, I am a scientist. And to prove whether I have a diploma or not, I'm not going to.
Defendant: In your talk, you ...
Yunitskiy: I am an academic [inaudible, but it looks like the "nuclear"] Academy of Sciences!
Defendant: Which Academy?
Yunitskiy: [Unintelligible, but again like the "nuclear"] academy. Including the academy that you do not like so much - RAEN.
Defendant: What else?
Yunitskiy: There is an international academy - I do not remember the exact name - in the field of space. There are diplomas, I do not remember from memory.
[photo of Yunitskiy in the board-room]
Let's clarify that among the 12 phrases from the article “Elon Musk - bullshit, carry money to me. Belarusian founded a “company for $ 400 billion” and builds an ultra-high-speed Sky Way near Minsk, to which the claimant has complaints, there is the following: “It is the fundraising scheme for the construction of the park in particular and the string transport in general causes the most controversy and suspicion . Money is collected from ordinary people, in return, they receive ‘shares’ of the Euroasian Rail SkyWay Systems Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands (about 40% of offshore companies in the world are based here). "
Defendant: What's wrong with this phrase?
Yunitskiy: You see, the journalist wrote a letter to Yunitskiy - to the general director, general designer of String Technologies. It was the general director and general designer of CJSC String Technologies who invited him for a conversation, he came to my office in Minsk, then we went to our production in Belarus, in Minsk, and not in the Seychelles. Then we went to the EcoTechnoPark in Marjina Horka. And so what does this story have to do with the interview?
We emphasize that during the preparation for the interview, we turned to Anatoly Yunitskiy precisely as to the head of the SkyWay group of companies, not suspecting that he was also related to a certain JSC String Technologies. It was the representative of SkyWay who brought us to Ecotechnopark, which, as it turned out much later, is being built by “String Technologies”.
Defendant: So this phrase is true or not?
Yunitskiy: No.
Defendant: Why?
Yunitskiy: This is distorted information.
Defendant: How is it distorted?
Yunitskiy: You see, "you can not kill mercy." You can put a comma in one place, and you can - in another. I know how one word, one comma can distort the meaning. In this form is a lie. I tried to explain to you that this is not so. If you do not understand - these are your problems ... What do you catch there in separate phrases? The whole point! Read the whole article!
[photo of Yunitskiy in the board-room]
Who was offended by the Onliner.by article - the head of the SkyWay group of companies or Yunitskiy personally?
Among others, a linguist invited by the plaintiff was present at the court hearing. According to her, the author used a special trick in preparing the article - a “shadow on the fence”.
In the title of the article, the author tries to cast a shadow on the fence, because he uses the very strange wording in the title: “Elon Musk - bullshit, carry the money to me”. In this phrase, the second part (“carry the money to me”), it does not belong to Yunitskiy, but is a composition of the famous phrase by Daniel Kharms, who wrote “Stupid people, bring me more money”. In our modern culture, the phrase “carry money to me” is often used in demotivators on the Internet. And these demotivators denounce the ROC ... The phrase is very widely known.
According to the linguist invited by SkyWay, the article of the journalist Onliner.by contains negative information regarding Anatoly Yunitskiy as the head of SkyWay. During the court hearings, however, the plaintiff himself stated that he did not manage such a company, moreover, it does not officially exist, it is just a “club of interests”.
The court had a question - who nevertheless was offended by the article?
Court: Opinion of the specialist whom you submitted, says that the article defames you as the head of SkyWay. You yourself indicated at the last meeting and have now confirmed that SkyWay itself is not you. You are not its leader. If Ivanov is told that he does not know how to build anything, he will not be offended because he is not a builder, but a banker. Right? Therefore, we are trying to clarify, these phrases slander you as someone?
Yunitskiy: As a person, as a citizen of the Republic of Belarus ...
Court: You can distinguish between those points that you indicated in the statement of claim, which phrases relate to you personally as an individual, which ones - as the head of String Technologies, CJSC, which ones - to SkyWay?
Yunitskiy: Everyone treats me ...
[another photo of Yunitskiy in the board-room]
The linguists invited by Anatoly Yunitskiy also had to supplement their explanations on the fly. The fact is that, according to the expert, out of 12 controversial phrases, only three can be attributed personally to Yunitskiy, while the rest relate to the activities of the SkyWay group of companies. The author of the idea of string transport himself said that all phrases defame him not as a leader, but as an individual.
Court: So why do phrases that relate to SkyWay offend Yunitskiy?
Linguist: Because the article presents Yunitskiy exactly as the head of the company ... Everything that relates to the company’s activities related to Yunitskiy ...
Anatoly Yunitskiy demanded that Onliner.by and the journalist publish a refutation, remove the article Elon Musk - bullshit, carry money to me. Belarusian founded a “company for $ 400 billion” and builds an ultra-high-speed “Sky Way” near Minsk and to pay the plaintiff 200 thousand denominated rubles as compensation for moral damage.
Today, the court rejected all the claimant’s claims, concluding that the controversial article does not tarnish its “honor, dignity and business reputation”. Also, Anatoly Yunitskiy will incur costs associated with the cost of Onliner.by for legal services. Note that the court decision has not entered into force and can be appealed in accordance with the procedure established by law.
_
We add that the site Onliner.by since its inception has actively supported high-tech projects. We closely follow global innovations, rejoice in the success of Belarusian startups, worry about promising domestic developments and support them. During the study of SkyWay, we formed our opinion regarding this project, which we, in accordance with the laws of our country and the norms of journalistic ethics, conveyed to readers. At the same time, we are confident that the true scientific potential of Belarusian scientists will manifest itself more than once in the implementation of truly useful ideas.
Onliner.by continued providing criticism of SkyWay activities. Their next article concentrates on some of the dubious figures employed at the central SkyWay office complex who are have a history in pyramid marketing and are employed for the purpose of posting misinformation about the company to the internet. Its title translates to “ ‘I am leeching from financial pyramids’ ,‘development prospects are virtual’ – What is happening to Yunitskiy’s SkyWay?”. It was published on 11 September 2017 and you can view the original here: [47]. A translation of this article was also published in German with annotations and additional research on the Burrenblog. You can view a Google translation of this article, however, in your language of choice from the menu situated top-right (for this reason only a summary is included below): [48]
The next publication posted 14 September 2017 includes a copy of an ‘open letter’ to the editor of Onliner.by. A translation of this letter, in which Yunitskiy regrets that physical duels are prohibited and calls the journalist Sidorovich a ‘lover of cock-heads’. I was only able to translate this letter because it was downloadable in its original PDF-format from the SkyWay website. You can read the original here: [49]. But you can also see the open letter in Russian posted on the SkyWay website here: [50].
Юницкий написал открытое письмо Onliner.by, опубликовав его «на правах рекламы» в ряде СМИ (14 September 2017) Unitsky wrote an open letter to Onliner.by, publishing it “as an advertisement” in a number of media outlets
By Nikolai Kozlovich (14 September 2017)
On Monday, we published the next part of the journalistic investigation concerning the activities of the SkyWay project. Today, an "open letter from engineer Unitsky to the chief editor of Onliner" appeared on the Internet. A number of sites posted it "as advertising", we, guided by editorial standards, set free. Engineer Yunitsky regrets that physical duels are prohibited, gives details of his biography and challenges Onliner.by.
What is it all about and why are we writing about it again?
Very briefly. A year ago, we wrote about SkyWay, after which ideological inspirer of string transport Anatoly Yunitsky filed a lawsuit against Onliner.by and a journalist. The claim was dismissed. Onliner.by continued to monitor the creative success of the project, simultaneously sending requests to government agencies and research institutes, so that technology prospects were evaluated by experts. The answers were published here in this material and did not require additional explanations.
And now open letter Unitsky
From engineer Yunitsky to editor-in-chief of Onliner Kozlovich
Mister editor! I suppose that you are aware of the attitude that is being expressed to me and to the activities I carry out in Belarus on the territory of the mass media you lead. Having the ability to influence public opinion, you consciously and consistently form in your readers an idea of me as a fraudster. In doing so, you ignore the presumption of innocence, since, having no evidence, you base your judgments only on assumptions.
You are not fascinated by the breakthrough SkyWay transport and infrastructure technology, to which I have dedicated my whole life and to which dozens of countries are interested, including my native Belarus, or three fundamentally new transport systems built in Marjina Horka. You are not impressed by the hundreds of highly paid and highly intelligent jobs created in the last two years, nor by the modern production formed in just one year at the place of the bankrupt Yo-mobile. You are not interested in tens of millions of dollars in investments from more than 200 countries of the world that have come to the economy of the country in which you live, nor millions of dollars in taxes paid. It’s hard for you to understand that the engineer who didn’t do anything wrong with you personally and your editorial board has been working on the embodiment of technology for almost 40 years and has lost more than acquired during this time, and therefore simply call him a scam.
You are not interested in my path in science, my membership in the USSR Federation of Cosmonautics, two United Nations grants I received, my two gold medals of the All-Russia Exhibition Center (VDNH) of Russia, three Golden Chariot international awards of the Ministry of Transport of Russia, over 150 inventions, over 100 scientific works and almost 20 scientific monographs, the last of which ("String transport systems: on Earth and in Space", 379 pages, 188 illustrations, 14 tables and hundreds of formulas) was published by the Belaruskaya Navuka publishing house a month ago.
The support given to me by tens of thousands of people all over the world, and the fact that about five thousand of them (in your opinion, being “Deceived real estate investors”) personally came to Belarus from many countries to see the test sections of string transport (called “Potemkin villages” by you) and express their support and gratitude to engineer Yunitskiy.
Apparently, you are not embarrassed by the despicable means used by your employees or the general bias in providing information that distinguishes their articles. This probably matches your goals. You can always justify yourself by the fact that everyone has the right to their own opinion. It really is. And I, for example, cannot consider you an honest person. At the same time, it is not completely clear to me whether you are a coward and cowards, whether your subordinates who put signatures under articles that I can’t call patquili. For this reason, I will allow myself to make you an offer and will judge you by how you respond to it and whether you will answer at all.
I invite journalist Sidorovich, a lover of cock-heads, to meet live and express all my accusations in my face. A journalist can bring with you you, your experts, anyone who only sees fit. We will think over the rules that will suit both parties; we will attract independent judges with weight in society. We will arrange a meeting on the basis of any of the media, whether it is an onliner or any other. Or, for example, in the Academy of Sciences, which, in your opinion, is also an opponent of string technologies.
If you are confident in the justice of their attacks against me - you have nothing to fear. If you crave scandal and increase the popularity of your publication - you have nothing to fear. The event will certainly be resonant and increase your awareness. Even if your representatives turn out to be less convincing than I do, you can always say later that “this rogue fooled people’s head”, pull a couple of phrases out of context and turn everything inside out, which you are doing very well. In fact, you will lose only in one case: if you do not respond to my offer.
Your refusal to accept my offer will be regarded as cowardice and unwillingness to answer for your words. You throw mud at me with such bitterness as if I was a tyrant and a murderer, walking around your flea market with impunity. Since I do not have newspapers and TV channels under my control, I cannot respond in proportion to your attacks and conduct an information war with you, and physical duels are, unfortunately, forbidden. I'm just an engineer and an entrepreneur.
All that is in my power is to call you into a direct conversation in the presence of independent experts. If you have at least a drop of the dignity of a journalist, then you must accept my proposal. Otherwise, you will be no different from anonymous slanderers hiding their eyes, informers at all times, who have so easily denigrated scientists and pioneers, to whom I myself consider myself. How will you be no different from those scammers in the NKVD in the 1930s, because of the lampworms of which more than ten members of my family were recognized as recognized by Polish spies and rehabilitated only after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Engineer Anatoly Yunitsky
Their next article whose title translates to “The Court rejected Yunitskiy’s appeal” and was published on 6 October 2017. You can view the original here: [51]. It basically concerns the fact that the Minsk City Court dismissed Yunitskiy’s appeal against their previous dismissal of his claim, obliging Yunitskiy was to pay all of the legal costs incurred by Onliner.by to defend themselves. This article also explains why it is illegal to sell the shares of SkyWay shell companies in the Republic of Belarus because they were not officially registered there. They further comment on the fact that the company that is registered in Minsk [GJSC String Technologies] has a total of 10,000 shares but further specifies that the company is not permitted to openly sell these shares.
On 16 December 2017 they published an article whose title translates to "SkyWay loader and unibus collide in Pukovichsky district". It relates information about the accident that took place between a SkyWay vehicle and a truck at the EcoTechnoPark and includes graphic photos of the damaged vehicles. You can view the original here: [52].
On 18 September 2018 they published an article with a title which translates as follows: “Is it an April Fool's Day Joke?" What is happening to Yunitskiy's SkyWay” and you can view the original here: [53]. The National Academy of Science were contacted, and apparently this organisation has refused accreditation of SkyWay as a scientific organisation and they suggest that the SkyWay technology needs to be independently tested in real-world conditions by organisations with actual scientific accreditation. According to accredited scientists like Professor Vladimir Zylev, claims being made by Yunitskiy are unrealistic and unrealisable: he does not know when, if ever, simple gullible people who invest in the SkyWay will get their money back.
Это прикол на День дураков? (18 August 2018) Is it an April Fools Day Joke?
https://tech.onliner.by/2018/09/18/skyway-2
«Это прикол на День дураков?» Что происходит со SkyWay Юницкого
“Is it an April Fools Day Joke?” What is happening with Yunitskiy’s SkyWay
18 August 2018
Over the past two years, we have written more than once about SkyWay’s Anatoly Yunitsky. The author of the string transport technology even managed to take offense at Onliner.by; he sued us and lost the case. Recently, the company celebrated another year of work in Belarus, but we continue to closely monitor the project. What is happening today with high-speed transport Unitsky?
What is SkyWay
Recall, in theory, SkyWay is a kind of railway, the rails of which, firstly, do without sleepers, and secondly, are elevated above the ground on concrete supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body.
[an image of futuristic SkyWay vehicles speeding through a cow field]
TEXT: First, the string tracks had to be straight and level …
[an image of SkyWay vehicles travelling between skyscrapers]
TEXT: …with minimal use of metal and concrete (illustrations from rsw-online.ru)
The idea has been worked out by Anatoly Yunitsky, a native of the Gomel region, for almost 40 years. The main postulates of the Belarusian engineer are as follows: string transportation is safer, more environmentally friendly, faster (emphasis is placed on speeds of 500 km per hour or more) and is ten times cheaper than everything that exists now.
[photo taken at the EcoTechnoPark]
TEXT: But something went wrong. Photos courtesy of Onliner.by reader
[photo of a close-up of the track]
In Marjina Horka a test track has been under construction which should demonstrate in reality the above mentioned advantages of the project. Money for everything is collected from ordinary people who, in return for their contributions, are promised either shares, or stakes in the company, and someday - wealth, happiness and a bright future for their grandchildren. More information about the project can be found in our previous articles.
NAS about the "scientific merit" of SkyWay: there is no need for detailed consideration of the project
For a long time, Anatoly Yunitsky dreamed of enlisting the support of Belarusian scientific organizations. Thus, in 2016 and 2017, scientists visited the proving ground in Marjina Horka: experts from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus studied the possibilities and feasibility of implementing this project. Last year, academics cautiously spoke about the unproven viability of SkyWay and the need to conduct a detailed independent examination involving the National Academy of Sciences.
[photo of the imposing circular pillars of the Belarusian NAS building]
We, like many investors, were very interested in what conclusions the examination came to. The disappointment unexpectedly attacked from the corner - it turns out that no more scientific studies of the project were carried out.
We sent a question to the NAS: “Did the experts of the National Academy of Sciences conduct over the past year (from August 2017 to August 2018) a study of the SkyWay string transport project, did you participate in its experimental tests? If so, what conclusions did the experts draw? ”
“The need for additional detailed consideration of the project of CJSC“ String Technologies ”in 2017–2018. did not occur, "- was the answer.
[copy of two page letter received by Onliner.by from the Belarusian National Academy of Science, 5 September 2018]
At the same time, Anatoly Yunitskiy really wanted to get the status of a scientific organization for his company. But this did not happen. The engineer was offended: "The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus twice rejected our application for obtaining the status of a scientific organization under the pretext of ‘pulled a string and went on it - what kind of science is there?’ Although we have more science than in some research institutes of the Academy."
[close-up of Yunitskiy at EcoTechnoPark wearing a hard hat and speaking to some people]
TEXT: Photo from the report Onliner.by, published in 2016
At the NAS, they explained to us that String Technologies CJSC, in fact, submitted documents in which they tried to substantiate a certain “contribution to science and the socio-economic development of the country”. Apparently, the contribution was not very weighty: “According to the results of the majority of votes, the commission decided to refuse accreditation for the status of a scientific organization.”
The professor: a very good financial and technical pyramid is built in Belarus
But Anatoly is drawing not only to Belarusians, but also to other scientists, so long as they are official. The SkyWay project has long and firmly linked complex relationships with the Russian Institute of Road, Construction and Structures. Once the specialists of this institution carefully studied the project of string transport and came to the conclusion about its failure. Yunitskiy, however, did not abandon attempts to achieve the location of an influential transport institute and relatively recently tried to read something like a lecture there. It all ended with a scandal.
[photo of Professor Zylev]
Vladimir Zylev. Photo: MIIT
Opponent to the academic of the ‘Russian Academy of Natural Sciences’ was the Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department "Construction Mechanics", Honorary Transport Builder and Advisor to the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences Vladimir Zylev.
- In Belarus, serious financial problems are coming. There is no animation, there are real investments. There, from my point of view, something like a very good financial and technical pyramid is being built.
Firstly, the money that simple gullible people have invested in this business ... I do not know when they will get this money back. Investments? I doubt it very, very much. Secondly, I think that our institute will make a very big mistake if it takes this case under its wing and oversees it, takes responsibility for the decisions that have been made there. Because all this is absolutely unviable, - Vladimir Zylev is sure.
[photo taken from Yunitskiy’s presentation posted by Zylev on YouTube – the prof. of the pyramid, MIIT, 7 December 2017]
According to the the professor, SkyWay does not provide calculations on how much a string rail will cost, how much money it will take to lift and lower people from a height, how much costly anchor supports will cost, how the cost of the project will have to be caused by the inevitable destruction of existing communications.
“From my point of view, something like a very good financial and technical pyramid is being built”
But then the economy, and in fact there are also key technical aspects. According to Vladimir Zylev, the calculations made at the institute showed that already at a speed of 160 km / h when traveling through the anchor support the booth will receive the acceleration experienced by pilots when performing aerobatic moves.
The author of the idea of string transport did not continue to endure, and, as has already happened more than once, resorted to the help of insults. To the comments made, Anatoly Yunitsky sent a professor to read his monograph, expressing confidence that he would not understand the formulas placed there. In the end, the author of SkyWay said that the institute, where he was, and not the institute at all, but “a boarding school for mentally retarded children.”
Is this some kind of joke?
Several years have passed since the appearance of Anatoly Yunitsky in Belarus. Alas, but in fact during this time nothing has changed. “Until now, not a single section of the “road of the future” has been built with at least one of the declared characteristics” - this phrase has to be written for the third year in a row.
“Why make a perfectly smooth path if nothing changes in terms of comfort? Moreover, when there is such a wavy movement, in fact it is better for a person.”
Instead of the announced “ideally smooth ways”, the rails bending under the weight of booths are noticeable. Predictors of the future can only dream of the stated speeds (judging by the numerous commercials available on the network, the speed of the smartest booths is good if it reaches 40 km / h, which is 500 km / h). There is no need to talk about security either, because the “safest transport in the world”, which has never been commissioned anywhere, already has a serious accident with victims in its portfolio.
[photo of the vehicle after it collided with a truck]
TEXT: After the crash. Photo: UGKSE in Minsk region
SkyWay probably understands that it is far from what was promised. Therefore, employees of the company are always ready to answer the most acute questions. No high speeds? What would you like if the track is short! The "Strings" sagged? That’s what happens in tests! The rails are suddenly not “perfectly smooth” and the cabin hangs? And this is all done with care about your health! Here is how, for example, Anatoly Yunitsky comments on this moment:
“Why make a perfectly smooth path if nothing changes in terms of comfort? Moreover, when there is such a wavy movement, in fact it is better for a person. I’ll explain why. If a person will sit on a sofa for years, he will not live long, this is understandable. But if he will walk for years, he will live a long time. Why? Because when a person goes ... At a step, the body and head are lowered - this is a vibration. Moreover, it falls by 50-60 mm with a frequency of 1-2 Hz - this is the optimal frequency; at other frequencies, large, the person feels bad. That is one or two oscillations per second.
nolink://youtu.be/RsOqyDPUpY8
So it is just - hee-hee - the length of the flight. At a speed of 20 meters per second, this is 72 km/h, which is about the frequencies that will be, right? That is, the passenger will have the feeling that he is not moving, but travelling. And this is better than sitting still. That is, it is not only cheaper, because it is not necessary to strongly tighten the string, and so on, right? And still good for the health of the passenger. He needs to be engaged in sports less, he drove and actually did physical exercises, that's what's the matter. ”
Or here’s a project in Australia, about which SkyWay “investors” liked to talk about a lot (and often) a year or two ago. Recently, rhetoric about the interest of the former head of the South Australian Department of Transport, Rod Hook, in string transport has subsided. Why? Where is that “first project” in the country of ostriches and kangaroos, the talks about which were so long massaging the wallets of dedicated contributors?
Anatoly Yunitsky is not the first to answer uncomfortable questions: “Everything is heavily regulated there, and they are ready for a targeted project only for our money!”
[Rod Hook and Yunitskiy pictured together]
TEXT: Rod Hook on the right. Photo: Rod Hook's Twitter
But Australia and the most forgotten Rod Hook have their own versions of the failure of the “first project”. An elderly ex-official said, for example, that Anatoly Yunitsky had difficulty obtaining a visa for this green continent. Local politician Chris Picton spoke more capaciously and specifically when he saw a joke on April Fool’s Day on SkyWay.
But now the academic of the ‘Academy of Natural Sciences’ has a new goal. Damn those Australians, because there is the United Arab Emirates with the sheikhs!
Course on the UAE
SkyWay is heading for the United Arab Emirates, Anatoly Yunitsky announced at the recent Ekofest in Maryina Gorka. There was almost no talk about the technical nuances of string transport. They talked more and more about financing, Elon Musk and Hyperloop (it turns out, the passengers "just cooked hard-boiled or boiled", and the vacuum pipe was the first to draw Yunitskiy 40 years ago), factories in space, a sports electric car, some kind of planetary vehicle (an estimate of intellectual property - 9 , 6 trillion dollars, should be thrown off all of humanity, the payback period is instant) and “cryptocurrency on blockchain technology”.
[photo of static display of SkyWay vehicle]
TEXT: photo courtesy of Onliner.by
Entertainment for the sake of guests showed "the world's first drone with a tonnage load." However, nobody raised a ton, and the drone itself could not take off. Perhaps because it turned out to be an old Ka-26 helicopter, painted for the sake of high-tech with blue windows. By the way, such a written off machine costs about 40 thousand dollars.
[photo of a helicopter painted blue]
TEXT: Drone, because even the glass is painted over. Photo courtesy of Onliner.by reader
But I’m telling you all of this in order to explain the new goal - the UAE. They will definitely make a string transport with the stated characteristics. Why is it not in Belarus? The following explanation for the relocation was explained: SkyWay was poorly accepted in our country, the Minister of Transport called Yunitsky a “criminal”, the National Academy of Sciences did not recognize merit.
- Do you think we were met better in Belarus (than in Lithuania. – ed. Onliner.by)? A series of custom-made articles appeared on the most widely read electronic media, in which SkyWay was called the financial pyramid, the eco-technopark itself was called the Potemkin village, and they called me to figure it out, said the ideologist of SkyWay.
One small paragraph, but so many inaccuracies, which once again forces us to be wary of any statements by representatives of the company. Take the same "custom articles", about which the authors of string transport know much more than us. I remembered advertising materials on Tut.by (colleagues, however, also got for the following texts), in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Nasha Niva, Zvyazdze, in the magazine Delo, on the website Myfin.by. They wrote about the project a lot and positively on BELTA, in the newspapers Soyuznoy Veche and Delovaya Gazeta, Bolshoi magazines and Office Life, OnAir official publication Belavia, on Pro Business, Ezhednevnik and Interfax websites , “Belarus Today”, even on STV and BT was shown several times!
But, probably, SkyWay support was still not enough. After Russia, Australia, Lithuania and Belarus, the time has come for the United Arab Emirates. Now they will have to host the next test complex. Will all employees go there? It is difficult to say now, because Anatoly Yunitsky has promised that the test site in Belarus will remain. But, given the price of all previous promises, we would not unconditionally believe him.
After all, earlier, investors were already “exactly” promised to build string roads in India, Indonesia, Australia, Belarus, and a Swiss village. Or why not in Peru? Recently, Claudio Alejandro, Solla Suarez, head of Nueva Lima, came to Marjina to join SkyWay to be friends. They also like to promise a lot there, make futuristic videos, show off pre-orders and attract money from “investors”, but not on the roads of the future, but on the cities of the future. However, Anatoly Yunitsky nullified all previous “achievements”: it was announced that the next “very first” targeted project would start in the UAE. I wonder what the next country is in line for the honorary title of "very first"?
From the engineers among the peasants, or fishing, rental, grill and bathhouse instead of strings
Maybe, well, this string transport, space and other salvation of mankind? Expensive and does not work. But everyone wants so much to relax in his old age, take a steam bath, catch a fish, and if you can also earn money on it - it's all beautiful!
SkyWay's “Investors” are delighted - the other day, the Academic of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences with the modest name of Yunitskiy invited everyone to his peasant farm. One hundred hectares, half of which is a lake leased from the state. According to the engineer, 500 thousand dollars was invested in the reservoir.
[screenshot from a film of fishing spots at the reservoir next to the SkyWay track]
Citizens promise a cultural vacation. A voucher for a reservoir with the ability to catch 3 kg of fish - 15 rubles, a gazebo with barbecue - 10 rubles, a fishing rod rental - 2 rubles, a stand for it is free. There is a bathhouse, houses, chickens and piglets, soon they are threatening to open a contact zoo.
Plans to go to the farmers at Anatoly Yunitsky, judging by the extract from the unified state register of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, were born a long time ago, exactly to the design of the dream of a string transport that surrounds the Earth. The farm, he tried to get hold of in 1992. But somehow this didn’t happen. Perhaps not enough money.
[extract from the state register]
Now with the financial side of things, everything is in order. And plans are bigger. “There will be a cafe, a hotel,” says the Academy of Natural Sciences and adds: “I want the fishermen to go.” To deal seriously. Local newspapers printed ads, several clips appeared on the Internet, where Anatoly Yunitsky says: “Come to my lake, go fishing!”
Ex-SkyWay Engineer: here it smells not of advanced technologies, but of a blown bubble
Pavel, who worked as an engineer on the SkyWay project (he provided a copy of the employment record), contacted the Onliner.by editor. The man had long doubted whether it was worth joining a company with such a reputation, but in the end decided to try.
- On the third day of work, an idea appeared - where did I get to? .. I saw not the most innovative developments in the world, but the most innovative bureaucracy in the world and commendation.
[photo at the office complex]
TEXT: Hereinafter used photos from the report Onliner.by, published in 2016
According to Pavel, mostly people with little experience come to the company, who have no serious projects behind them. In addition to them, there are “adventure seekers” and gullible people who believe in the ideas of string transport.
- During my work, I got the impression that for the money of investors they are trying to create a certain product, similar to what is shown in commercials, articles and on posters. All in order to knock more money from people. Nobody is oriented to the declared promises of 500 km / h and the route hundreds of kilometers between cities. There were no clear requirements for the mobile transport, or for the tracks, or for the general functioning of the systems. Engineers do not have an understanding of what they should do, and often they only try to “depict work”.
[photo of a suited figure pointing at cut-outs leaning against the wall]
Pavel assured us that no one thinks about security issues either. How to evacuate people in case of emergency situations and accidents? How will the regulation and notification take place? No one was interested in these and many other important questions. But there were other tasks.
“During my work, I realized that there is no smell here and no advanced technologies, but it smells like a blown bubble.”
- It seemed to me that the workers were more concerned with the construction of the Yunitskiy farm. It is very actively developing. Particular attention is paid to the houses. The house is conditional, in fact, full-fledged country cottages are being built. They are there in the slang language within the organization are divided into the house of the "nephew", the house of "Yunitskiy" and others close to the "emperor." Smart investment.
Pavel noted that inexpensive equipment was used in the development of the “most advanced” technologies. Not a single fully finished solution or product that can be launched into production has appeared.
[Photo of builders at the EcoTechnoPark in a pit]
- Take a cargo overpass ... It was planned to divide it into three sections, each of which is separately controlled by people hidden in the booths. They wanted to present all this as the work of the whole complex. Again, everything is aimed at one or two delegations that need to show at least something to knock out the money ...
To summarize, during the time of work, I realized that it doesn’t smell like advanced technologies here, but it smells like an inflated soap bubble.
Three days after Ekofest, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX first sent a “used” Falcon 9 rocket to the space of the last modification called Block 5. SkyWay investors were also actively publishing on the Internet images of the old helicopter and videos of the Parovozik attraction .
The most recent publication of Onliner.by was published on 22 February 2019 and its title translates to “I invested 6,600 dollars in SkyWay. We are looking for rusty Yunitskiy strings on the world map”. You can view the original here: [54] and an English translation of the text here: [55]. It tells the story of Olga, who actually managed to retrieve the initial money she invested after complaining to a lot of different official organisations and the prosecutor’s office. So you shouldn't give up hope if you've invested money and are unhappy with your investment. Maybe if you cause enough trouble too they will also be willing to return your money to stop you from causing them more misery.
Legal threats were made by SkyWay against journalists of the popular Crimean news portal primechaniya.ru (Примечания). They criticized SkyWay for promoting the funding of fictional projects in Sevastopol using telephone and network marketing techniques, as well as physical canvassing on the street and at promotional events. Here follows the translation of article that initiated these threats and three follow-up articles which also concern SkyWay. They are critical of fraudulent projects promoted by the Sevastopol branch of SkyWay (directed by Khovratov, the same man who brought the legal actions against Volga News in Samara), but also they recount the Onliner.by and Volga News litigation.
PRIMECHANIYA.RU Articles - Telemarketing and Legal Threats in Sevastopol
The first article is viewable here ([56]) and was published on the 4 July 2017. It concerns a non-existent project in Sevastopol being promoted by telephone and network marketing, and the dubious nature of the whole SkyWay project. The second article viewable here ([57]) documents the attacks which began against this news portal almost immediately after publication. The third article viewable here ([58])
concerns an actual promotional event held on the streets of Sevastopol to gather the signatures of citizens and promote SkyWay projects with aggressive sales techniques. This article confirms the Lithuanian suspicion that SkyWay were selling worthless shares. The fourth article viewable here ([59]) concerns in particular the legal threats made against Primechaniya by SkyWay but also the dubious nature of fundraising techniques used by this company. It comments particularly on the fact that although these threats were not realised against Primechaniya, they were brought to the courts in Samara, but that Volga News information portal fortunately won this case.
On the basis of these articles you could conceivably include an extra sentence in a proposed new ‘litigation’ section which says something like “Legal threats were also documented against a popular news sender in Crimea after they posted an article questioning claims they were making about their company’s arrangements in Sevastopol”. These threats are also confirmed in the Volga News articles. But whether or not this is considered significant enough to include by other users, these articles include confirmation of the Lithuanian investigation and the onliner.by and Volga News court-cases.
Под пение струн: в Севастополь зашла новая пирамида? (4 July 2017) To the singing of strings: has a new pyramid come to Sevastopol?
Towers throughout the city. Sapun Mountain, Balaklava, Inkerman, North - they grow even from the water on Fiolent. Above the ground, wagons of people rush along the strained strings. Haven’t you heard? Against expectations, innovative transport "Russian Elon Musk" has already conquered the world. Now engineer Yunitsky has come to you. Things are easy - to invest in the shares of his offshore company.
[computer-generated image of a futuristic tower connected by SkyWay cables]
The presentation of the project called SkyWay, which is now actively posting Sebastopol public on the Internet, recalls pictures of futurists from the mid-20th century. Concrete bollards, which, judging by the project, it is proposed to build even in the territory of the Chembalo fortress, raise happy passengers over traffic jams, allowing them to enjoy the views. A well-placed voice-over and background music make it clear: this is something truly global.
A visit to one of the more than 20 project sites offers you a brave new world. It turns out that similar SkyWay projects are now actively broadcasting in other Russian regions, and even countries. It turns out that the project "has already invested $ 70 billion" – just like Bill Gates. Here in the video, happy investors listen to their guru and his lively representatives. Here are the experimental supports of the new transport line. True, they are only two meters tall, instead of strings - water pipes, and instead of cars - a capsule per passenger, and that one is drawn in 3D. But the creators radiate such confidence that their doubts immediately become embarrassing.
The technology of string transport, which is known under the name Sky Way, can be found in Soviet newspapers and magazines of the 1980s. These are such rails without sleepers, suspended above the ground on concrete supports.
[photo of a SkyWay track in the Australian desert]
TEXT: Photos from the personal page "Vkontakte" of Anatoly Yunitskiy
In this case, according to the authors of the project, the string-rail is a bunch of prestressed tension steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The idea has been worked out by Anatoly Yunitskiy, a native of the Gomel region, for over 30 years, the presentation says. String transport is safer, more environmentally friendly, faster (emphasis is placed on speeds up to 500 km / h) and is ten times cheaper than all that exists now, he says.
So this is real import substitution. We knew we would wait to see you. And it is very symbolic that this meeting takes place on the bloodstained ancestors of the land of Sevastopol. They fought back the fascists here, and we will shame the Western sanctions of domestic believers, who doubt that a global technological breakthrough is possible in the country of Skolkovo and Rosnano. Here it is, the very showcase that we dreamed of in 2014.
"Like Apple"
The search engine on request skyway gives a lot of sites with demos, in colors describing the project. Yunitskiy himself is devoted to a full page with a description of his merits on the site “Tradition”, a favorite of Russian nationalists.
It says that Yunitskiy is a scientist, engineer, author of more than 140 inventions and more than 200 scientific works. The author of the concept of a non-rocket transportation system for the exploration of near-Earth space - the Planetary Vehicle. Member of the USSR Cosmonautics Federation. Member of the public organization of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. The Russian Academy of Environmental Sciences (RAEN) has no relation to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and is criticized by a number of academics and RAS staff for the fact that some of its members are persons who are far from science, have no proper education and recognized scientific publications. For example, according to Yuri Kuklachev, Ramzan Kadyrov and other eminent academics notes that the RAEN promotes the pseudoscientific theory of torsion fields.
It is reported that Yunitsky rented a 35 hectare land plot near Minsk - a former tank test site on which the whole Ecotechnopark is being built to demonstrate “ready-made commercial solutions”.
[photo of a half-completed test track in Belarusian fields]
In the abundance of sites with portraits of Yunitskiy and presentation colorful 3d-models there is not a single video with a demonstration of the current development of air transport in which it is proposed to invest.
Here, for example, is the video where behind the very real Yunitskiy and the interviewer the so-called “unibike” is moving - a 3d model clearly drawn on the computer.
Despite this, the sites are full of information about SkyWay cooperation not only with the heads of various Russian regions, but even with other states, for example, with India. Yunitskiy constantly places the stands of his project at various technical exhibitions, after which the sites are filled with photos of an engineer with interested delegates from various countries.
In an interview with the Belarusian portal onliner.by, the entrepreneur said that his intellectual property is estimated at $ 400 billion. It is more than the cost of Google. Who exactly appreciated his achievements in such a sum, Yunitskiy did not specify.
[Photo of Yunitskiy and a colleague in Belarusian fields]
TEXT: Anatoly Yunitskiy and Ruslan Gattarov, Deputy Head of the Celyabinsk Region, who visited him at Ecotechnopark
Infrastructure projects of this scale are usually financed by the state and large companies. But Yunitskiy collects them from ordinary people who get acquainted with the colorful presentation on advertising in local and federal media. You buy electronic shares - and you expect profits. 20 years.
The trouble is that there is no money to develop a working prototype for Yunitskiy. “We collected 10 million dollars for our program, but for such serious projects costs more than a penny,” says Yunitskiy. - We thought that we’d need at least 300 million. However, we are constantly optimizing costs, and I think that now 200 million will suffice. ”
If you believe the inventor, he is constantly deceived, persecuted, robbed and left with nothing. And so - for decades on the same scheme:
Yunitsky “almost completes” a sample of the string road, then officials or competitors come, take away everything, drive Yunitsky away, he again searches for a new country to implement his ideas, starts building there ... and so on in a circle. All this was repeated in Russia, Australia, Lithuania, Belarus.
“In Russia, my partner was the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Alexander Lebed,” the entrepreneur told the onliner portal. - He brought in a personal 300 thousand dollars to the project ... Then in Russia the first test site was demolished. I went to Australia, but everything was taken away from me there in 2011.
Lithuania has a different vision of the situation. Last year, the Central Bank of this country stressed that the "inventor" sells worthless shares.
And the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office declared him “suspect in the investigation in connection with fraud, illegal economic, commercial, financial activities and legalization of funds acquired by criminal means, which is carried out by the Financial Crime Investigation Service”.
I had to flee to Belarus - and again to Russia. Apparently, now Yunitskiy is trying to expand to the Crimean peninsula.
In the morning, money, in the evening - something.
The Government of Sevastopol told Primechaniya that the SkyWay initiators came with a presentation to the department of priority projects. There they were advised to first submit technical documentation and clarified the procedure for submitting the draft to the strategic council.
The department of public communications explained to us that not a single project will be accepted without clear justifications: attractiveness, usefulness, volume of investments and, in principle, the project’s feasibility.
Primechaniya have become interested in what kind of company SWIG (SkyWay Invest Group) is, which promotes this video in the Sevastopol information field. And what kind of company should still be invested by the person interested in the project. It was difficult to answer this question right away.
It turned out there is no such company. There is SWIG-Crimea Ltd., which promotes the idea of a high-tech project in the Crimean area. It is headed by a certain Andrei Khovratov. The same person on numerous resources calls himself the CEO of the SkyWest Invest Group.
[photo of Andrei Khovratov in front of a SWIG poster]
According to users of the biznet.ru business forum, Khovratov might have been involved in the creation of a company that collected $ 6 million from newly-minted shareholders to develop a gold-bearing field in Zambia. Whether it was developed is unknown.
There is also the Belarusian String Technologies Company, which is headed by Yunitskiy. There is a Russian LLC String Transport Yunitskiy, headed by him. And another infinite number of LLC, JSC, CJSC, and so on. It’s impossible to understand right away where to invest all the same.
Find the official website of the SkyWay group of companies - the same: there are at least 20 portals promoting Yunitskiy's “air string technologies” online. As a result, we found out that investor money goes to the British offshore location, but more on that later.
By trial and error we find out that the official site of the SkyWay group of companies is rsw-systems.com. Call the number indicated on it. The responding girl immediately reports that it is on this site that an investor who wants to invest money in the SkyWay project must register. She confirmed that the investment object is “the technology of Anatoly Yunitsky, who owns a controlling stake”.
When asked where we, as interested potential investors, can get acquainted with the design and survey work, drawings of Sevastopol, the girl says that there is no documentation for individual projects, and it is proposed to invest in something in common, becoming the owner of certain shares.
“We plan to build in different countries and regions,” she says. —Talks are underway now, perhaps in your region. While this is all at the negotiation stage. We will help you choose a stock package. ”
You can invest through “several different sites,” the dispatcher says:
“If you are investing in technology now at this stage, then these shares have already invested a profit from all future targeted projects. When we continue to open new companies, it will be in the future. Now we have only one opportunity. Several of our sites are the same promotions. Not shares of different regions.
Further, the uncut dialogue of our correspondence with the dispatcher:
- I, as an investor, want to familiarize myself with PIRs, drawings. With what I plan to invest in. Can I get acquainted with them?
- I did not get that...
- Can I get acquainted with the drawings?
- And yes, on the website unitsky.com. There is a description of the technology. And on the site rsw-systems.com in your account you will find an investment memorandum, where all the conditions are described in detail. As for targeted projects - this information will come later. Now there is just a description of the technology. We have now concluded an agreement with Mogilev, with India on the construction of a road. It is at the negotiation stage. Construction will begin.
- we will upload videos and news and you will see how the construction is going. All the constituent documents, all we have. You just need to register, - the girl says.
The girl refused to give the name of the company that will issue shares in exchange for the investment. “I will not even dictate. There is everything in English. You just register here. Everything is there. ”
After that, she immediately jumps to the fact that "there is a referral program." That is, a potential “investor” is immediately motivated to attract other “investors”. He brought five (ten, fifteen, and so on) people - get your percentage from their contributions.
Immediately on the site rsw-systems.com future investors explained - if the project fails, there will be no refund. There are no guarantees either.
[Screenshot of SkyWay website showing SkyWay policy with certain lines of text underlined]
The chance of failure is incredibly great.
First, because today the company does not offer a finished product. In fact, a person is invited to invest in the air without any guarantees.
Secondly, because you end up investing in an offshore company. As Primechaniya found out, having registered as a hypothetical investor, money is collected from ordinary people, in return they receive “shares” from Euroasian Rail SkyWay Systems Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands (about 40% of offshore companies in the world are based here). You pay a dollar per share, and at the exit you are promised a "theoretically possible multiple profit, up to thousands of percent or more."
[typical SkyWay flowchart which attempts to explain offshore activity]
TEXT: SkyWay Group structure. Screenshot from the “investment memorandum”
Thirdly, when it comes to the courts, Yunitskiy deny that his is involved with rsw-systems.com - the site on which his interviews, self-presentations, videos with 3d-visualization, etc., are published, from which he himself publishes on their pages in social networks.
“I am not, say, the head or employee of the SkyWay group of companies. I have no relation to them,” said Yunitskiy at the trial against onliner.by, who wrote about his suspicious activities. Journalists of the portal told Primechaniya that the entrepreneur eventually lost his case.
In addition to journalists who suspect Yunitskiy of organizing at best a not insignificant form of network marketing, and at worse - a financial pyramid, it seems that this entrepreneur particularly dislikes his American "colleague” Elon Musk.
“He and his SpaceX are bullshit,” Yunitsky told onliner. - And Tesla is bullshit too. They do not solve any problems, because in order for the same electric car to move, it is necessary to burn three times more fuel than the internal combustion engine does. Hyperloop is complete shit. Money is stolen, laundered and cronyism flourishes. There is no project. The idea of putting something in a vacuum tube cannot be called a project. This idea is a hundred years old at lunch. And it was proposed by a Russian scientist, and I have it in my 1985 monograph. We can also steal. ”
Anatoly Yunitsky insists that Elon Musk has only fantasies, whereas he has a ready-made solution to all major world problems.
“This boy from South Africa just wants to make money, but for me money was never the goal. He is a businessman, and I am not! He just has good PR. If you can attract billions, talking about good goals, then why not voice them? They made Musk a billionaire Mask and gave his project funding (SpaceX) - that's all. We do not need space for a hundred years. He is needed for industry, and man is a terrestrial product, and to kill the Earth in order to fly to Mars is complete nonsense! Only lunatics say that!
And everyone shouts: hurray, Musk is a genius! Let's live on Mars! And I say - do not fly anywhere, you must live on the earth according to the laws of God.”
Interestingly, in 2014, Ruben Mejlumyan, known for his work at MMM-2011 Sergey Mavrodi, joined SkyWay promotion.
“This is a circus attraction"
According to scientists of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, consulted by the news edition onliner.by, there is no practical sense in the ideas of Yunitskiy.
“The so-called string transport is a circus, an attraction. But even the circus rides, before being put into operation, must be certified and carefully studied.”
“Everything that we see here is only static calculations,” the engineers' letter says. - Where are the calculations of the moving load? This is a very old problem that has been solved for decades by outstanding scientists - mechanics, mathematicians, and physicists.
It is necessary to clearly establish the length of the sag of the rail or, as Yunitsky calls it, the strings, as well as many other parameters. Without addressing the dynamic impact of a moving load in a system, dangerous fluctuations may occur that will lead to catastrophic consequences.
[photo of a computer-generated image of a sleek SkyWay vehicle moving on a track above water]
What is the voltage of this string? What kind of effort? If you pull the cable, the deflection literally in millimeters causes such loads that no “string” can withstand. To increase strength, it is necessary to increase the diameter. However, if we increase the diameter, the cable itself will be of [huge] weight ... And how much metal will be needed! And what a load on the support!
Before you do something, you need to carefully calculate everything, everything else is talk. No such construction is carried out without the most complex engineering, mathematical and mechanical training. Without all this, Yunitskiy’s activities are worthless - this is the “Skillful Hands” group and children's toys.
In addition - security. Imagine that on these pillars the transport will indeed go at a speed of not even 500, but 180 km / h! The territory under the supports is still not suitable for any economic or relaxation activities.”
Hope sellers
In fact, Yunitsky decided to sell the most profitable product with a zero cost price - he sells hope. The hope that they can make money out of thin air. That they will be able to invest a dollar, and get a thousand without doing anything else. But it’s extremely likely that someone else is making money out of thin air right now.
Продавцы воздуха грозят «Примечаниям» Роскомнадзором (6 July 2017) Air sellers threaten “Primechaniya” with Roskomnadzor
The article “Primechaniya” about people calling for Sevastopol residents to invest in the SkyWay “string” transport system (the movement of cars along the cables stretched between concrete towers) was not liked by the adherents of this dubious business. When we assumed that a pyramid could be behind the initiative, we began to receive threats.
[computer-generated image of a futuristic SkyWay tower]
Recall that in the last two weeks in the Sevastopol segment of the Internet, the video presentation of air transport has been actively disseminated. The authors of the video propose to install practically skyscrapers in the city, to tighten cables between them and to put overhead passenger cars on them.
Giant supporting towers, which, judging by the project, it is proposed to build even in the territory of the Chembalo fortress, on a video with 3D-visualization entangle the entire city, including the waters.
A certain SkyWay company promises to implement the project (such a company does not legally exist) for private contributions: people are offered to invest in a non-existent object, invite friends and acquaintances to share - and thus become the owner of electronic shares of the company under another name, which turned out to be British offshore. SkyWay does not want to seek funding from the state or on serious crowdfunding platforms (where responsibility for deception is provided).
All this “Primechaniya” described in detail in the article “Under the singing of the strings: has a new pyramid entered Sevastopol?”
Today, a day after the publication, the Internet trolls of this project started attacking “Primecheniya”.
First, comments appeared on the material praising the author of the project Anatoly Yunitsky. Then reprimands began that our edition was “someone paid” for skepticism regarding SkyWay. The profiles of the authors of comments in social networks abounded with project logos and alternated with an abundance of business training advertisements like “register and earn from the first minute!”. Then came a wave of comments with links to SkyWay sites. After they were deleted, protests from annoying company employees fell on the editorial mail. Then the spammers from SkyWay became so much that we decided to close the comments. As a result, threats came to the “Primechaniya” post to expect “guests from Roskomnadzor” (the Russian federal executive body responsible for censorship).
Such anomalous activity, in our opinion, only confirms the assumption that, in the person of the SkyWay project, Sevastopol faced an aggressive financial pyramid. Recall that the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office accused the author of the project of fraud. In this regard, "Primechaniya" advises Sevastopol to be cautious.
Авантюристы из SkyWay охотятся за данными севастопольцев (22 November 2017) SkyWay adventurers hunt for data from Sevastopol
SkyWay, promoting the utopian idea of string transport in the Internet space of Sevastopol, went to the people. Adherents of the company with signs of financial pyramids collect signatures for the project, allegedly agreed with the authorities. Just a tick in the right place is not enough. Those who flatter themselves on colorful booklets are offered to buy shares in an offshore company or at least leave a phone number. Perhaps it is the contacts of the townspeople are the main goal of promoters.
SkyWay promoters were spotted last week in the city center, on Primorsky Boulevard, and in the lobby of the cinema "Monsoon". In between sessions, annoying young people offered the audience to give their signature for the construction of a string road, the draft of which, they said, had already been agreed “with whom it is necessary” (and even with the military).
Those who respond to the request to sign it is not clear to whom the petition was sent, the company's employees obsessively remind: the project is very profitable, and only now anyone can invest in it. As soon as the road works, money will flow into the pockets of future investors
Talk about the construction of a circular string road capable of connecting remote areas of the city began in Sevastopol in the summer of 2017, when a video presentation drawn in 3D was massively replicated in the Internet community. In it between the giant concrete towers installed on Sapun-gore, in Balaklava, Inkerman and Fiolent, on the stretched steel cables, as on rails, passenger cars slide.
The picture looks surreal and futuristic, but a well-placed voice-over broadcasts: the technology of the future has long been worked out and is ready to serve people. In reality, further mini-models of cars at the SkyWay exhibition site did not move.
In the video about finance - not a word. But any interested Internet user in the network is expected by more than 20 sites of the company that “implements” similar projects in dozens of cities in Russia and the near abroad - all for “popular” money. Anyone can invest in construction, invite friends and acquaintances to share, and thereby become the owner of electronic shares of the company under a different name, which turns out to be a British offshore company.
Despite the large-scale promotion, the declared support from large investors and the state, in none of the cities did they even begin to build towers. But the gullible investors of a breakthrough startup are convinced: the technology has already been tested at one of the landfills in Belarus, however, the video with a moving test car for one person also looks like computer graphics. SkyWay is critical of criticism - it sends a huge number of praising bots in comments, and then sues publications that dare to doubt the company's activities.
Official science is skeptical of SkyWay’s idea of the Skytrain. Experts of the Moscow State University of Communications studied the technical feasibility of the project and made a conclusion about the failure of this technology. Scientists of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus believe that "the so-called string transport is a circus, an attraction."
In July of this year, Primechaniya wrote about these and other suspicious inconsistencies in SkyWay business projects, and also suggested that its activities may have signs of a financial pyramid. After the publication, the editors began to receive threats: “expect guests from Roskomnadzor”.
Now, several months after the viral distribution of presentations, SkyWay promoters took to the streets of the city. Why do they need the signature of Sevastopol, is not yet clear. Perhaps the petitions will serve as an additional incentive to part with money for future gullible investors. Or perhaps the true goal of the dealers are the contact details of the inhabitants of the city - a base of people who are easy to contact and are not critical of such projects. With them you can continue to work in the telephone mode.
Despite the fact that the activity of investment pyramids is prohibited by Russian legislation, SkyWay continues to “work” not only in Sevastopol, but throughout the country, while the neighboring countries have already drawn the appropriate conclusions.
Thus, in 2015, the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office accused the project author of fraud, and the Lithuanian Central Bank, having familiarized itself with the investment model proposed by SkyWay Unitsky, confirmed that the residents of Lithuania and other countries were offered worthless shares.
Official bodies and financial institutions of European states such as Latvia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania issued warnings about Sky Way activities.
SkyWay «приструнили» на 120 млн рублей (3 March 2018) SkyWay "straightened" 120 million rubles
The promoters of the dubious SkyWay project could not sue the journalists who called their "Unitsky string transport" a pyramid scheme. “Primechaniya” received legal threats when a campaign to attract money to castles in the air began in Sevastopol.
[photo of sleek computer-generated SkyWay image on a track above water]
Last July, Primechaniya also wrote about the castles of the SkyWay group of companies. The company began to actively promote its string transport in Sevastopol. In the supermarkets of the city were placed racks with presentation materials and company logos. Video presentations of the project were published in various city public places - according to the commercials, modern cars will run through the city on strained strings through the air. The towers, between which the strings should be stretched, were planned to be driven all over Sevastopol, including near Chembalo in Balaclava. All this is on the money of shareholders. But not large investors, instead ordinary citizens who were offered to purchase shares for their hard-earned money. As it turned out to "Primechaniya", the money is sent offshore. Tracking them is really impossible. The company does not provide any guarantees - this is directly written on one of the many SkyWay sites.
After the publication in the commentary, a huge number of people came around, making fun of our publication and praising the genius of designer Anatoly Yunitsky. There was no evidence that the project was real, they didn’t cite - there is still no string transport in any city on this planet, despite the fact that the Unitsky company announced such a fundraiser collection not only in Russian cities, but even in Belarus , Lithuania and Australia. We also received threats to the editorial mail - unknown persons promised us lawsuits to the court.
Read more about what SkyWay is in our material “To the singing of the strings: has a new pyramid entered Sevastopol?”
A legal claim against Primechaniya has not yet been reported. But other Russian news senders were taken to court and they won. On February 9, 2018, the Arbitration Court of the Samara Region rejected the claim for protection of the business reputation of Sky Way Group LLC and Andrei Khovratov, a resident of Sevastopol, to the Volga News information portal, the Volzhskaya Kommuna newspaper editorial board and two of their employees. The plaintiffs requested an unprecedented 120 million rubles, but the court found these claims to be unfounded.
The reason for the trial was the publication “Widely spread networks”, which was published in the “Volga commune” on April 21, 2017 and was published on the same day on the pages of our online publication. Its author, Alexei Dmitrenko, said that representatives of the Sky Way Invest Group, registered in the offshore zone of the British Virgin Islands," offer residents of the region to become investors in a dubious project to build a string transport, hiding behind non-existent contracts with regional authorities." After a talk with the local representatives of the company and its head Andrei Khovratov, the journalist concluded that the principles of the work of entrepreneurs are similar to the financial pyramid. This opinion extremely outraged the heroes of the publication, and on September 7 they filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Court of the Samara Region.
On the basis of misleading information being posted about projects in Samara and Sevastopol as documented in these articles, the marketing heading which documents this use of misleading information in their promotional material could be extended as follows, adding to the specific instance of Mogilev. Any suggestions on how this could be better worded appreciated:
...Similar misleading promotion has been documented in other places where the SkyWay Group has been seeking investment, such as Russia [Volga News reference], the Crimea [Primechaniya reference] and India [onliner.by reference].Zachar (talk) 13:28, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
TUT.BY Articles – testing the Technology
TUT.BY is a well-known and popular information and service website in the Belarusian and Russian languages. They also published a large series of articles on the Yunitskiy’s SkyWay technology and the EcoTechnoPark. Not all of the articles, however, are negatively critical of SkyWay. Some of these articles just report news of recent SkyWay events. And they also published an article by Mikhail Kirichenko, one of the employees whose specific job is to promote the company and has been criticized for posting false information about the company. You can uncollapse below to read summaries of each of these articles which are followed by actual translations which can be checked individually for accuracy and content.
TUT.BY articles - summaries and translations
The first article the published was published on 30 May 2014 and you can view the original here. It concerns the reasons for Yunitskiy to develop his project in Lithuania. This was before the Siauliai scandal came to a head and his project was closed down for security reasons. Yunitskiy skipped the country never to return.
On the 15 May 2015 Anna Ermachenok published an article attempting to explain the controversial funding of the testing facility from small investors they had recently started building near Marjina Horka. You can read the original here: [60]. This article describes the office complex centralized in Minsk. They also spoke to Professor Zylyov of the MIIT who he and his colleagues analysed in 2006. They concluded in a research paper that it would be unusually expensive and that high speeds would be unreachable. Other scientists suggest it would be possible in theory.
On 28 June 2017 Ermachenok published another article on the EcoTechnoPark. You can view the original here: [61]. Although the EcoTechoPark is discussed, the problematic issue of investors is brought up and Yunitskiy explains why it was a mistake to attempt to get funding from the government although he does his best to avoid talking about investment: he can’t be blamed if investors lose money. It is also mentioned that the Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus, Kalinin, visited the facility and called it “questionable and unnecessary”. Yunitskiy brushes off any claims that his company consist of crooks, swindlers and scammers.
On 7 September 2017 they published an article which includes interviews of engineering staff who have a history in formula-1 racing and go-karts. You could get the impression that this article presents a balanced opinion about genuine engineers who work for the company until you discover that it was written Michael Kirichenko who actually works for the SkyWay company as “Chief of News Services”. He has been criticized in the past for creating exaggerated and unsupported information about SkyWay technology on the internet. You can view the original here: https://42.tut.by/559095. His conclusions? People with a history in sport must be truly great people who work well together as part of an incredible engineering team.
The next article was published on 5 August 2018 and was written by Dmitry Smirnov. You can view the original here: https://42.tut.by/603396. This article is interesting because it relates his experiences at the EcoTechnoFest which had taken place (and which takes place yearly) which opens the park to the public and has devoted SkyWay fans from around the world descending on the park to try out the technology. Although TUT.BY were refused an invitation, the journalist went anyway and commented on the international audience of entirely unqualified fans who seemed devoted to Yunitskiy’s untested experiment which they had actually helped bring into existence (as no government would ever pay a cent to fund a dangerous, untested technology). Highlights of his day included a visit to the SkyWay museum whose ceiling is adorned with the names of investors (the can also plant a tree with their name in the orchard). It should be mentioned here at this event, Yunitsky mentioned the release of a cryptocurrency at this event which will help the growth of SkyWay’s assets.
The next article published on 20 September 2018 concerns the InnoTrans trade fair in Berlin and is viewable here: [62].
On 16 November 2018 are article was published concerning an employee of SkyWay who had resigned because of dissatisfaction with the company, telling them as much in his resignation letter. Later the company accused him of leaking information to the press and confiscated his company shares. You can view the original here: [63].
The most recent article published 2 May 2019 concerns the proposed project in Dubai which had been supposedly approved by the Sheikh Mohammed in his tweet. You can view the original here: [64]
Белорус предложил Литве транспортную революцию (30 May 2014) Belarusian offered Lithuania a transport revolution
https://42.tut.by/401291
Белорус предложил Литве транспортную революцию – из Вильнюса в Каунас за 15 минут
Belarusian offered Lithuania a transport revolution - from Vilnius to Kaunas in 15 minutes
(30 May 2014)
A trip from Vilnius to Kaunas in a few years can take 15 minutes. So says the Belarusian scientist Anatoly Yunitsky, who invented the string transport.
A train that looks like a plane without wings should move along a very strong string stretched in the air.
[Computer-generated image of sleek Sky-Way vehicles]
With such a project, Yunitsky, who established Rail Skyway Systems Ltd in Lithuania, is embracing the thresholds of local governments and state institutions. He wants to create a technology park in Lithuania where he plans to carry out final tests and certify his invention.
"We offer a completely new transport, like the Wright brothers, the pioneers of aviation, Stephenson, who designed the first railway, or Ford, who assembled the first car. Our product will create a new market," said the scientist.
He said that even in his student years he understood that the existing transport is not optimal, because of him people often die, it is not environmentally friendly and harms nature. And for over 30 years he has been perfecting his idea. According to the source, the string transport does not harm nature, it is economical.
[computer-generated image of SkyWay vehicles moving above a traffic jam]
The scientist believes that the string road can be equipped at least at a height of 5 meters, but, depending on the needs, it can be built even higher. He argues that he has been researching for a long time how to build a flyover as the cheapest, since it is very expensive. It is estimated that a kilometer of a standard railway overpass costs about $ 100 million. Therefore, the scientist invented a particularly durable road - a steel string that can withstand heavy loads. This road is much cheaper than usual, as it needs 10 times less material. According to the projects prepared by the scientists, the designed train will fly over the ground along the string.
"This transport can be used in the city instead of a tram or bus. Stops can be equipped on the roof of a multistory building, and stretch a string road between them," said the scientist.
For such a vehicle, designed for 40 people, you need very little energy - 5 kW • h. Approximately as for a moped. The scientist claims that such a vehicle is 20 times cheaper than the subway. This technology for the transport of goods are interested in some countries in Africa, America, Europe, Australia.
Why chose Lithuania?
The company wants to create a technology park in Lithuania, where it will conduct tests for about three years in order to offer a patented new type of transport to the market. According to the scientist, he wants to rent for laboratories about 10 hectares, and for test roads a section of about 30 km long and 100 m wide is needed.
[photo of a SkyWay vehicle towering above an almost empty highway near a futuristic station]
If you manage to buy or rent a plot, three types of string transport will be improved in Lithuania: cargo, the speed of which will be about 100 km / h, passenger transport, which will carry passengers in the city at a speed of 150 km / h, and the fast passenger, with a speed about 500 km / h, which can carry about 200,000 passengers per day.
When asked why he chose Lithuania for this project, the source said: “Russia and Belarus are unattractive because of the investment environment, and Lithuania protects the interests of investors. But if we decided to settle in Germany, we would have a strong competitor there, Siemens , in France, Japan has its own fast trains. Why do they need us? I am Belarusian myself, so Lithuania seems to me to be an ideal place. "
According to the scientist, the enterprise does not ask for money, but intends to invest $ 300 million in Lithuania. At the beginning of the project it is planned to employ up to 500 people. Workers are looking for now.
Now Unitsky is meeting with heads of various local governments, is preparing a project for the Ministry of Transport and Communications. According to him, if in a few months it is not possible to find a suitable site, the company will look for another country.
На "дорогу будущего" под Марьиной Горкой (15 September 2015) On the “road of the future” near Marjina Horka
https://42.tut.by/464466
Со скоростью 500 км/ч. На "дорогу будущего" под Марьиной Горкой изобретатели ищут 300 млн долларов: https://42.tut.by/464466
With a speed of 500 km / h. Inventors are looking for $ 300 million for the “road of the future” near Marjina Horka
by Ann Ermachenok (15 September 2015)
This summer, under the Marina Gorka, the construction of a test facility for “string transport” began - a long-standing and tangled innovative project of the Belarusian engineer Anatoly Yunitsky. TUT.BY spent one day in the office of the company "String Technologies", trying to understand when we can ride on the transport of a new generation and why the project has such a controversial reputation.
1300 kilometers in three hours
The office of CJSC String Technologies occupies several floors in one of Minsk business centers. We are invited on the day when guests from Australia are scheduled to arrive - the project interested Rod Hook, the former head of the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure of South Australia, with his business partner Maree Wauchape.
[photo of Rod Hook and Anatoly Yunitskiy]
Australians have a problem with long-distance transport - railways are outdated, and it’s inconvenient to travel by airplanes inside the continent. Therefore, they are looking for innovative projects that would help change the system.
Anatoly Yunitsky is the head and general designer of String Technologies, as well as the author of string transport. He gave the Australian a tour of the offices and a model workshop, and at the same time told about the project.
“Here we have 15 design offices,” says Yunitskiy, walking down the corridor. The engineer says that a year ago he was the only employee of the company. Now, about 120 people work in the Minsk office of String Technologies. About a hundred of them are engineers and designers.
First of all, our small excursion group is led to the designers and shows the design projects of the devices that the company is working on.
[photo of Rod Hook and Yuitskiy in the Minsk offices]
Anatoly Yunitsky has solutions for several types of transport: high-speed intercity, urban and freight.
All three types are transport modules on steel wheels, which must move along rails stretched between the supports. The distance between the main (anchor) supports can be much larger than that of ordinary bridges - from 1 to 5 kilometers. Between intermediate supports - 40 - 60 meters and more. The transport itself is going to be raised to a height of several meters above the ground.
The speed of the engineer promises much higher than in modern trains - up to 500 km / h outside the city and up to 150 km / h - within it.
[photo of computer-generated image]
“This is the design of the city station, where both urban and high-speed string transport can stop,” shows Yunitskiy. - You can arrive at the station in Adelaide (city in Australia. - Note TUT.BY) by public transport, transfer to a high-speed unibus (passenger module. - Approx. TUT.BY) and in three hours get to Sydney - drive over 1300 kilometers.
The engineer is confident that such transport will be more economical and convenient. Know-how - and in the way of building the tracks, and in the engine, and in the unmanned control system. Professor does not disclose all technical details in order to protect the design from being copied.
On many pictures, the rails and stations are already inscribed in the landscapes of cities - for example, there are renders for Moscow, St. Petersburg and Abu Dhabi. There is also a project for the site under Marjina Horka.
"The machine vision unit will be able to decide on braking itself"
Further Yunitskiy leads guests to the offices where engineers work.
Photographing in this room is impossible. More precisely, it is possible, but so that the monitors do not fall into the frame. Scientists in general are extremely serious about privacy - engineers have no Internet on computers, and there is no Wi-Fi in rooms to prevent leaks.
[5 photos of the staff of SkyWay at work in offices and outside the building]
Anatoly Eduardovich offers to look at the monitors, what experts are working on. One in a special program shows how much load the wheels of the transport module will experience when turning. The other demonstrates a detailed three-dimensional model “motor-wheels” - the engines plan to place them inside each wheel.
- So we model everything - suspension, wheel, rail, overpass, control system. Look, all this is on paper too, - Yunitsky draws our attention to a thick stack of drawings.
In another room, they are engaged in a binocular machine vision system, which will help to manage unibuses.
- The system detects the station, detects the previous object and obstacles that occur on its way, - explains one of the workers.
It is assumed that there will be no drivers in unibuses - the dispatcher from the control center should set the direction. At the same time, according to Unitsky, each unibus will have its own intellect. For example, if even a small object suddenly appears on the rails, the rolling stock will detect it automatically and stop. And the existing warning systems in trains can skip a log on the tracks.
“The system will notice not only the log, it can ‘see a matchbox’,” says Anatoly Eduardovich. - And evaluate whether it is a danger or not. If it decides that the object is dangerous, it will slow down.
The monitor shows a three-dimensional model of the device for decision-making. On another computer, the intellect is tested using a simulator that simulates various obstacles to movement.
Nearby in the room there is a two-meter model of the tail of the unibus - it is “trained” by the artificial vision system, which should be able to recognize other vehicles.
- In extreme cases, the engine vision unit may decide to brake on itself. It doesn't matter what the dispatcher says and what the vehicle “thinks”. But if the distance between him and the obstacle is rapidly reduced, then the machine vision unit itself slows down and gives the necessary commands for the brakes.
Further Yunitsky leads us to the workshops. You can not shoot here at all, "not to give a hint to competitors." Here the engineer shows the system of intellectual vision in action. A small model of a unibus, fixed on thin rails, first determines the location of the “stop” itself, and then quickly approaches it.
In the other part of the workshop there are prototypes of passenger “modules” of the future transport system - four-seater and double. These models are needed to test the ergonomics of the interior. “These blocks can be made into a train that will hold up to a hundred people,” says Anatoly Eduardovich, sitting in the double compartment. - You can also buy one for yourself, personal. With mass production, it will cost no more than ten thousand dollars. Inside the passenger can work on a computer, read newspapers, and you can equip a bed.
"Presidents, sheikhs, oligarchs will watch, ride and order"
Yunitsky plans to launch the first working sample of his inventions in a year at a testing ground in the Pukhovichsky district not far from Marjina Horka. This object is called SkyWay EcoTechnoPark. The company wants to build on the territory of the "park" three transport lines - freight, city and high-speed. Also in the plans - a line of rolling stock, stations for passengers and loading / unloading. This will allow to test the new technology in practice and to certify the development.
[various futuruistic looking computer-generated iamges of the planned EcoTechnoPark facility]
For the construction, "String Technologies" have already received 35 hectares of land in the Pukhovichsky district and all the necessary permits. Now the ground is being prepared for the first anchor support and the station - they are digging a pit and pouring concrete.
[Various photos of Yunitskiy and workers on-site at EcoTechnoPark doing construction]
- Do you know Silicon Valley in the USA? - Anatoly Eduardovich finds an analogy. - It is needed not only to produce a demonstration of high-tech innovations. Here we will continue to improve technology in a closed area. To get ahead of everyone, we need test sites, we need to constantly improve them. And then it will be a shop where the presidents of countries, ministers, sheikhs, oligarchs will watch, ride and order turnkey transport solutions.
“I am looking for serious investors and networkers”
The cost of the construction project EcoTechnoPark to demonstrate all three areas of transport - $ 300 million. This amount will include the current work of the team and the construction of SkyWay EcoTechnoPark. In the meantime, investment is not enough.
“We work from the wheels and, frankly, it’s difficult,” explains the engineer. - Attract investments and immediately invest them in construction.
Anatoly Eduardovich does not plan to raise state money for EcoTechnoPark.
- We don’t need the help of the state, we ourselves want to help him - to give a program that will raise the economy of Belarus many times. We will create tens of thousands of jobs, we will use billions of taxes with the help of investments. The main thing is not to interfere.
Now "String Technologies" is funded by investments of the founder - a foreign company Global Transport Investments. The paid-up share capital of the Belarusian company, according to its data, is more than 5 billion Belarusian rubles.
- CJSC "String Technologies" has created more than 120 highly paid jobs and is a serious taxpayer, - the company says. - Tax deductions amount to more than 2 billion Belarusian rubles a month.
Investors are invited to become shareholders of the parent company of the project by purchasing a stake (investment in private equity) and earn in the future by increasing the growth of the company's value.
[photos of share certificate of Euroasian Rail Skyway Systems Ltd.]
The purchase of shares is actively advertised on the many sites of the group of companies and in its communities on social networks.
[photo of screenshot of SkyWay investment advertisements]
TEXT: screenshots of entries in the Skyway "VKontakte" communities
[SkyWay YouTube film of Selena Katoxina, a SkyWay devotee]
Belarusians, on the other hand, have the opportunity to buy specific objects in SkyWay EcoTechnoPark under contract agreements. In exchange, the names of investors will appear on these objects. Also, customers are issued certificates for a paid object, and the founder, GTI, is a share in the SkyWay group of companies.
Anatoly Eduardovich considers this method of project financing to be more efficient, since the investments go directly to the settlement account of the Belarusian company, and not to foreign accounts.
- We will have thousands of patents. More than 50 patents were received for the technology, but these are umbrella patents - these are not those patents that protect specific technologies. And now we will specifically defend the equipment we are doing - these are thousands of patents and millions of dollars just for patenting. This is a long procedure. I have about a dozen higher educations, one of them is patent law and invention - I am a professional in this matter and I know how to protect copyrights and intellectual property.
"We have a huge army of envious"
Previously, the engineer had already tried to launch his projects in other countries - in Russia and Lithuania. However, the success of his initiative was not crowned. For example, the Lithuanian project launched in 2014 was never implemented.
In 2014, the Control Service of the Central Bank of Lithuania launched an inspection of the Lithuanian project of Yunitskiy. No signs of a financial pyramid were found in his business. However, in 2015 it became known that he was suspected in connection with fraud, illegal economic, commercial, financial activities and the legalization of criminally acquired funds. Now the Lithuanian business project is closed.
“There is a long, tangled story there, I myself do not fully understand,” says Yunitskiy. - I think this is behind competitors. Most likely, it is Siemens. We crossed the road to their project at 20 billion euros. With the hands of the president and the prime minister of the country, they dealt with a competitor.
In Russia, the engineer had already built a first-generation cargo string test system test bench and conducted tests, but the project was also not completed.
[various photos of the ZiL truck on the Ozyory test site]
Later, the stand was destroyed by detractors. In Belarus, according to Anatoly Eduardovich, he feels much more secure.
- We have a huge army of envious, direct competitors, there are those whom we hinder. We deliberately do not make noise - there is an expression "money loves silence." Innovation and know-how love silence even more.
Tells the professor about his other ideas. For example, install solar panels directly on the rail supports or build a route for bicycle-driven unibuses that can accelerate to 120 km / h. It proposes to protect the pillars on the ground with a high-strength wire that will stop unwanted guests by the electromagnetic field, and build island skyscrapers on the piles in the sea.
[various computer-generated images of SkyWay projects, including one among the kangaroos]
In each idea, he puts care about the environment.
“If our civilization continues to develop as it is going now, then after 3-4 generations, the point of no return will come, and it will inevitably perish,” says the engineer. - Earth industry will kill her, and the reality will be what is shown in the disaster films. I have a way of how to avoid this - it is necessary to bring the industry into space. Rockets will not provide it. I have engineering solutions for how to do this. But this is the future. Now I am working on SkyWay heavenly roads as an offshoot from this space project.
Scientists about the project: "Theory does not always coincide with practice"
We asked Vladimir Borisovich Zylyov, Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Head of Construction Mechanics at Moscow State University of Communications (MIIT), about whether the new technology has a perspective. He and his colleagues in 2006 conducted a mathematical modeling of the system and published a research paper with an expert opinion on two types of string transport.
“We have concluded that this is impossible,” said Vladimir Borisovich in comment 42.TUT.BY. - What is being done there is unusually expensive, high speeds are impossible there.
The scientist believes that the new transport system can work only at low speeds.
- 500 kilometers per hour? It turned out that at a speed of almost 80 km / h the trailer flies up and bounces off these rails in the place where the support stands. Of course, at some speed it can move - say, 10 km / h. But then the question arises - how much is a kilometer of this railway? How should passengers go up there, how many people should be servicing the station?
According to the professor, at the stated speeds, the train will not be able to move smoothly, and the “string” at high loads can break and destroy a section of the road.
- It is difficult to say why people believe in it. They are not experts and trust those who started it. They think, since this is being built, since this is a real project, it means that it will really work.
True, not all experts think so.
“Theoretically, this is realizable,” says Igor Malygin, Dr. Sc. (Engineering), director of the Institute for Transport Problems named after N.S. Solomenko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - Yunitsky proved it in theory.
True, our theory does not always coincide with practice. Therefore, it is necessary to build an experimental landfill - the track, kilometers to 10 - 15 with height differences, so that you can prove [that the technology is realizable].
The professor also emphasized the need to prove not only technical capabilities, but also cost recovery in the near future.
- Any breakthrough technology will always be either dead-end due to its high cost and zero efficiency, or it will show what can really bring profit. It is necessary to understand that only what makes a profit now lives. Technology that does not bring it, remains a theory.
In mid-October, String Technologies will set a zero-kilometer mark in SkyWay EcoTechnoPark under Maryina Gorka. They promise to show the current city system in a year - in the fall of 2016.
Под Марьиной Горкой достраивают полигон "транспорта будущего" (28-29 June 2017) In Marjina Horka they finish building the foundation of the “transport of the future”
https://42.tut.by/549310Читать полностью: https://42.tut.by/549310
Под Марьиной Горкой достраивают полигон "транспорта будущего" и ждут Лукашенко
In Marjina Horka they finish building the foundation of the “transport of the future” and wait for Lukashenko
By Anna Ermachenok (28 June 2017, updated 29 June 2017)
In Pukhovichsky district, a testing ground for “string transport” by Anatoly Yunitsky was built. Modules are already driving here, but the stated maximum speeds are not shown right now. TUT.BY visited the facility and looked at what the inventor with an ambiguous reputation managed to build in two years, who promises to make a revolution in world transport.
[photo of a unibus at the EcoTechnoPark]
Recall, Anatoly Yunitsky - the head of CJSC "String Technologies" and its general designer. He has been working on the string transport project for several decades. The engineer started projects under the SkyWay brand in different countries, but during all this time he hasn’t presented working samples of high-speed transport.
Yunitsky announced plans to build a park near Marjina Horka two years ago. Then, for the construction, the company received 35 hectares of land in the Pukhovichsky district and work permits.
>>> With a speed of 500 km / h. Inventors are looking for $ 300 million for the “road of the future” near Marina Gorka
According to the engineer, transport modules on steel wheels should move along rails stretched between the supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The transport itself is raised to a height of several meters above the ground.
The distance between the main (anchor) supports can be much larger than that of ordinary bridges, from 1 to 5 kilometers. Between intermediate supports - 40−60 meters and more. Engineer promised speeds much higher than in modern trains - up to 500 km / h outside the city and up to 150 km / h - within it.
What is happening at the site now
The object that we are shown is called SkyWay EcoTechnoPark. Now you can see five roads, two stations and several transport modules.
An engineer leads to a three-story building. On the second floor, a station is planned for suspended unibuses of urban lines (speed up to 150 km / h), on the third - for intercity-mounted transport (up to 500 km / h). According to Anatoly, such a station will be able to pass 50 million passengers a year.
[photos of them working on SkyWay buildings at the EcoTechnoPark]
The string-rails are also almost ready. Unibuses and unibikes are already driving around them - this is what self-managed mobile modules, built specifically for the project, are called here.
Now, according to the engineer, transport cannot accelerate to speeds above 80 km / h. The maximum speed - 150 km / h - is not yet demonstrated: there is no concrete in the rails. By July 1, they plan to pour concrete, but the modules will not be overclocked for security reasons.
Especially for us are satisfied with a couple of "races":
[a YouTube films of a moving vehicle and 3 photos of vehicles on other tracks]
Unibuses for urban lines are also ready. They were in Minsk, according to Yunitsky, at work, which was followed by the e-mobile project.
Shows engineer from inside for a city. It has 8 seats and 16 more standing places. As planned by the developers, they can walk every 20 seconds and carry 20 thousand passengers per day.
Yunitsky announced plans to build a park near Marina Gorka two years ago. Then, for the construction, the company received 35 hectares of land in the Pukhovichsky district and work permits.
[3 photos – Yunitskiy is pictured next to one of his vehicles and inside one of them]
The inventor also demonstrates a double unibike, which he considers to be a substitute for private cars and taxis. “Then we will sell the salon, and this (part of the device with a motor) will be leased. Then the salon will cost a couple of thousand dollars, ”he estimates.
[3 photos of the cars with 2 seats one behind the other and people sitting in them]
Unitsky is confident that his project outperforms all existing modes of transport in energy efficiency. The engineer believes that such transport will save fuel and oxygen, and also reduce the emission of carcinogens into the Earth’s atmosphere.
“We have many detractors here”
According to the plan, the total cost of the park is $ 250 million. The company says that now the construction took about 10% of the total amount. (Earlier in the text it was stated that $ 250 million had already been spent. The company noted that this was not the case).
Yunitskiy claims that the Belarusian enterprise receives investments from a foreign fund, and he suggests that ordinary people buy the company's shares in the hope that they will become more expensive in the future. No guarantees. In social networks, many people are trying to persuade others to join the project through them.
There is a garden on the side of the roads and a name plate on each tree. These are the names of those who invested in the project more than a thousand dollars. Larger investors have their statues.
[2 photo of the lines of trees at the EcoTechnoPark and an investor’s statue wrapped in a black plastic sheet]
According to Yunitsky, now the project has more than three hundred thousand investors from 237 countries and territories. How many people have invested in a project in our country, the engineer does not know and stresses that “it is prohibited in Belarus”. In general, Anatoly reacts nervously to investment talks.
- Why should I now talk about investing, which I do not do? I am an engineer, understand? And I do not give any guarantees to investors. There are investment funds, ask them. Considering that we have a lot of ill-wishers here - in Belarus, in Russia and around the world.
“I was mistaken for forty years - I went around the ministries, oligarchs”
Not all experts consider the project feasible. Anatoly tells how recently the Minister of Transport, Deputy Prime Minister Kalinin and the Rector of BelGUT visited the facility. The engineer was not satisfied with the visit: according to him, the minister did not see innovations, called the project questionable and unnecessary.
- He even called me a criminal, because we drove the deputy prime minister on an uncertified vehicle! - the inventor complains.
[photo of Yunitskiy making a point]
Anatoly hopes that Alexander Lukashenko will visit the park. The engineer recalls how in 1997 he expressed support for the project. In March of this year, the president was sent an invitation to visit the park, but “the date is not yet known.” Although soon the inventor declares that he does not need government support.
- I was mistaken, probably, was blind for forty years. I went to presidents, ministries, ministers, sheikhs, oligarchs ... I was looking for support, I was looking for funding. And he worked. What have I understood over the years? No need to look for any support, you just have to do it - they will come. Therefore, when I came to Belarus, I did not go anywhere - they come to me, I do not go to them.
[4 photos from EcoTechnoPark tracks; the last shows Yunitskiy with a model of the ZiL truck in the background]
To questions about the legality of money-collection schemes, the inventor responds sharply:
“Some people accuse us of being crooks, scammers.” Naturally it is not so! Do swindlers spend money on it? They, probably, steal them and run away. I'm not hiding from anyone, I'm open. This is nowhere in the world. The same Elon Musk or, say, Hyperloop - now they have collected 200 million dollars. And what did they do? So they are not crooks, they are Americans, geniuses. It is us, Belarusians, - swindlers. And look what we did for less money!
The company plans to be certified this year. Recently, "String Technologies" received another plot near the polygon - a narrow strip of land 22 kilometers long. They plan to start building there in the fall, with the availability of investments - another $ 200 million.
“On this route, in two years, we’ll show a speed of 500 kilometers per hour,” Anatoly promises.
Общественный транспорт со скоростью Формулы 1 (7 September 2017) Public transport with the speed of Formula 1
https://42.tut.by/559095
Общественный транспорт со скоростью Формулы 1: кто в SkyWay отвечает за скорость
Public transport with the speed of Formula 1: who in SkyWay is responsible for the speed
By Mikhail Kirichenko
Not only to catch up, but also to overtake the world leaders in the field of transport. To solve an ambitious task in Belarus took specialists from the company CJSC "String Technologies". The team employs riders, mechanics, engineers, designers. Behind everyone - a great experience and its own story. The overall goal is to create a new generation of vehicles: high-speed (up to 500 km / h), urban (up to 150 km / h) and cargo SkyWay. About who in Belarus wants to be the fastest and what races SkyWay creators managed to win before - this article.
[photo of two of the tracks at EcoTechnoPark]
TEXT: Unibike (in the foreground) and unibus (in the back) - SkyWay rolling stock on special ramps.
The vehicles of the future, SkyWay argues, are electric cars on steel wheels, traveling on special rails. Alexander Sinkevich, who talks about himself and his team, is leading the work on the creation of such machines.
[photo of a group of people]
TEXT: Alexander Sinkevich (center) in the SkyWay assembly shop.
The backbone of the team began to take shape 30 years ago, when our interlocutor, while the founder of the legendary MAZ-TRT racing team, was able to refute the axiom-like statement of the classic Russian poetry and put the horse and the quivering doe into one cart! Speaking of modern prose - to create a legendary sports team that won countless road-ring races on its “battle bison” - sports MAZs.
Then there was the team "MAZ-Yarovit" on the freight trial, in which the future production manager of SkyWay worked as a sports director. With it, he won two European Championships, two CIS Championships, he himself gained experience in organizing and conducting competitions. In general, for his glorious sports career, Alexander was an engineer, mechanic, team leader, organizer of competitions and a judge. And then he became the ideological father of the program of the Russian national electric car, boldly baptized, as “Yo-mobile” ...
Today, the founder and inspirer of high-profile projects of the past talks about his journey to SkyWay.
[Black and white photo of men in front of a vehicle]
TEXT: The end of the 1980s. Alexander Sinkevich (third from left) and SkyWay test department head Dmitry Kniga (first from right).
With all the richness of choice, there was no alternative
“In the project where I go to work, the novelty, originality and complexity of the tasks are important. Often the criticism and disbelief that it is possible to do this is the motive. And for me, the result is still important, which I, in fact, always wanted, no matter where I worked. In the SkyWay project, I was especially attracted: the novelty and original, unusual look of Anatoly Yunitsky on the transport of the future, the engineering tasks set by him, which have to be solved.
[Photo of two people looking at a half-finished vehicle]
TEXT: Alexander Sinkevich and general designer, SkyWay author Anatoly Yunitsky
The relationship of family, friends and acquaintances to work in the company
Of course, there are many skeptics. And even in the circle of my friends. At the same time, a positive attitude to the project prevails: each of them would be happy for its successful implementation. They would be proud that this is done by our people! It seems to me that some of them have an element of envy, for it would be interesting to work in such a project, but for some reason this is not yet possible.
[photo of a whole team of people posing at the SkyWay workshop]
TEXT: team of the pilot production of SkyWay
The Team
When a little more than a year ago there was a task to move from design and modeling to the production of vehicle samples — namely, at that moment I was invited to perform this task — 3.5 months remained to the InnoTrans 2016 exhibition in Berlin. Naturally, in order to perform such an important task in such a short time I needed to gather specialists in whom I would be sure: in their qualifications, capabilities, capabilities, etc. Naturally, I turned to the people with whom I had worked in various projects, of which there were many, beginning in the late 1980s, when I initiated the creation of a ring racing team at MAZ to participate in the European Championships in racing races.
[photo of a man in a truck]
TEXT: Dmitry Kniga at the European Truck Traial Championship in 2001
Who came from motor racing in SkyWay
And one person from that team, master of sports Dmitry Kniga, who was an engineer and mechanic in it, is now working with me. We built a car together, went to the races together, and served it together ... In general, we did all the work from beginning to end. It turns out that we have been cooperating - albeit intermittently and in different projects - for 30 years already! Today, Dmitry heads the test department.
[Photo a Kniga posing in front of a SkyWay panel]
TEXT: Dmitry Kniga, Head of SkyWay Test Department.
Speaking of colleagues in motor racing, it is impossible not to mention also the master of sports Andrei Rudnitsky, an engineer of the test department. He is really an athlete, he has a remarkable quality even since the time of martial arts - the mood to win! Even before the motor sport victories, Andrei was already the champion of his country, the KMS on karate, who knew perfectly well what “Zanshin” is: in any situation you should be purposeful, but calm, that is be able to meet her without stress, and at the same time make quick decisions. We met in 1996, a lot went together during this time ... This is an athlete! He started many times at Dakar, and it is even impossible to remember all the international competitions and even the World Cups, in which he participated and won the stages, and in the “absolute”. In any case, there are more than a dozen rally-raids on his shoulders, which means that he has at least “iron eggs”! Can such a person fail?
[photo of a guy in racing gear digging in mud next to a car]
TEXT: Andrei Rudnitsky at the World Cup stage, Morocco, 2015.
[photo of the same guy today at the SkyWay workshop]
TEXT: Andrey Rudnitsky - SkyWay Test Engineer.
Or Alexander Kovalik, one of the strongest kart racers of the USSR, master of sports, thirteen-time champion of the BSSR, winner of many all-union competitions, winner of the USSR championship. He is still in perfect physical shape! This person is very pedantic, punctual, accurate, i.e. possessing all qualities necessary in work with units. So he is now engaged in the assembly of our electric motors, where everything must be done perfectly clean and accurate.
[Black and white photo of a go-kart]
TEXT: Alexander Kovalik in competitions, 1974.
[photo of a man at the SkyWay workshop]
TEXT: Alexander Kovalik - locksmith for the mechanical assembly work of the SkyWay electrical installation site.
It is impossible not to mention Vladimir Alkhimovich, master of sports of the USSR in self-similar sports, who possesses enormous knowledge and experience, owns aluminum casting technologies, works with various types of plastic, as well as with the smallest details of which large-scale rolling stock models and track structure models are made Unitskogo transport.
[photo of a man seated in front of a desk covered with devices]
Vladimir Alkhimovich - Turner of the SkyWay model site.
If youth knew, if old age could ...
The workshop has a large number of mechanics who worked as mechanics in sports teams, and we are talking about high-performance sports, the level of the championships of Russia, Europe, the world! SkyWay rolling stock is made by people who have extensive experience in creating vehicles with which they later participated and won major competitions. That's the whole point!
There are dozens of other former colleagues that I could gather. They constituted the backbone of the team that mastered the fulfillment of the task set by General Designer Anatoly Yunitsky last year. But these tasks are becoming more complex, their number is growing, so now I have 74 people under my command. When forming a team capable of solving the most complex and interesting tasks - which is obvious, because we are building rolling stock, which will soon fly along the string rails at a speed of 500 km / h, which even race drivers did not dream of - we observe a reasonable balance in the quantitative ratio between the experimental and young employees, and the words “mentoring” and “continuity” are fundamental here.
[Photo of the unibus on its track at the EcoTechnoPark]
TEXT: Unibus - the so-called SkyWay vehicle - on a special overpass.
How to get to work in SkyWay
The principle of team building is the following: first of all, these are the professionals with whom I worked, whom I trust and know how to lead them. In the second - those who were brought first, being confident in their professional qualities, no less than I in these of their former colleagues.
[photo of Alexandr Sinkevich]
We continue to recruit people - we need great specialists! Everyone we work with now came once, one might say, “from the street”, so for those interested in what we do, our doors are open anyway. But I place additional demands on them, because only the team is able to work in our conditions, very similar to those existing in sports. And our team is very similar to the sport in its organization, ideology, mood, psychology and relationships! For me, my staff is a set of high-quality precision tools, not a pile of rusty scrap. When I open the cabinet, I see amazing keys, each in its place. And, if I have a new task, I must fill in the empty places. At the same time, I am aware of the fact that for my supervisor I am myself the same tool in achieving my intended goal.
I have a double task: on behalf of the leadership, to strive for the team to solve the task and, at the same time, protect its interests before the employer. And subordinates are well aware and feel. Only if such a balance is maintained can productive work be possible.
[photo of a computer-generated image of SkyWay track in front of a rainbow]
TEXT: Visualization: high-speed (top) and urban (bottom) SkyWay.
Team spirit
It is on these principles that our team is created. You can call this approach a mutual responsibility, the Italian mafia ... it does not matter, because the result is important! I learned this for many years, starting with the team “MAZ-TRT”, which participated in circuit races, where everyone was friends, young, funny guys who managed to achieve great success: despite the difficult times, many times we were on the podium of the European Championships in England, Belgium, France ... It was very difficult to fight with the teams of Mercedes, MAN, Volvo, SCANIA and others. These were rivals that it was scary to just look at them! But for several years of hard work we managed to create a competitive car. And, frankly speaking, it was done on moral and volitional qualities, because we naturally didn’t have comparable budgets, we actually worked on the project at the plant with six people who designed and built this car themselves. My attitude is that the engineer must have dirty hands. A white collar can not create a full-fledged operating mechanism! The engineers who work with me, always do their own hands in the workshop and in the field what they have designed on the computer.
[photo of a number of men working on a SkyWay vehicles]
TEXT: A SkyWay Unibus during assembly
Once in England, in addition to the third place won at the European Championships, we received the Team Spirit Cup - Team Spirit. For us, he was more important than the podium at that time. We felt that team spirit is needed! Since then, with this thought, I live and work in completely different projects. If not, the result will not be.
What is characteristic of technical sports? This is the collective work of a large number of people where you didn’t screw up one gadget, because you were too lazy to reach out and destroyed the work of the whole team. A racer is a star standing on top of a pyramid. But so do all the others who remain in the shadows. They do not have star disease, but they have an inner core. And this is in addition to excellent professional qualities!
What else does sport produce?
It is this - the formation of character, accuracy, attitude to work - and is the most important in technical sports and in motor sports, in particular.
The knowledge, experience and people who have been working with me since the early 1990s were very useful today for the SkyWay project. Only one example - an important role in ensuring the safety of passengers of String Transport Unitsky is played by the technology of welding spatial frames. Those professionals who once cooked safety cages for racing cars, now make frames for SkyWay, which are aluminum spatial structures. Accumulated experience is adapted to the new conditions.
In the rolling stock, we also use sports brakes. We must be sure that we provide him the best performance. When we move to the industrial production stage, we will certainly give up the excessiveness of sports “stuff” and optimize the brakes, making their efficiency and cost necessary and sufficient.
[Photo of equipment at the SkyWay workshop]
TEXT: Pilot production of SkyWay
How useful the experience of creating "E-Mobile"
About 10 years ago I worked in partnership with Yuri Shif, having put my hand to the design of a couple of dozen bikes that became winners and medalists at international championships, including the world championship. On the basis of merit in the field of transport and industrial design, we were accepted into the Belarusian Union of Designers. In 2009, we were offered to develop the concept of a city car of the future using a hybrid power plant, which was the only prerequisite. For 4 months, we have created, without exaggeration, engineering and philosophical work about where the automotive industry is going, what will happen in the field of transport in 20-30 years and how to prepare for it. This understanding led me to SkyWay, where I brought all my experience. At that time, Mikhail Prokhorov, who was already rich and wanted to become famous, became interested in the project. Everything quickly began to turn, I became the technical manager of the project, with my participation his name was chosen, a PR campaign was developed, etc.
Unfortunately, then the development of “E-Mobile” went in the opposite direction and from the original concept in what happened at the end - despite the achievement of engineering and technical results, including the creation of prototypes and samples of the first stage - nothing remained, except for the hybrid installation. I realized that the project will not be and left him. I can only do what I believe in!
[computer-generated idealistic SkyWay image]
TEXT: Visualization: SkyWay unibus on a special overpass.
In addition to the experience with hybrid drives, transmissions and drives, from that project I brought SkyWay the ability to work with composite materials - prepregs, carbon, Kevlar, etc., which I first encountered when I was a technical director in a joint Belarusian-German joint venture " JAK Automotive Technology Ltd. back in the 1990s. We carried out orders for European motor racing: we designed racing cars for Formula 3, Formel Junior, ADAC-BMW Formel Junior, etc., made cars for Mercedes-AMG DTM, body and transmission parts for Porsche, Opel ... Materials brought from Germany, but all this was done in Minsk according to the technologies used in auto racing and aircraft industry! Therefore, do not be surprised when today Unitsky compares a unibus with a Boeing.
Several dozens of engineers, with whom I worked both at Yo-Mobile and Yarovit, today work not only with me in production, but also at KB String Technologies. For example, from colleagues in the E-Mobile project, Dmitry Zabrodsky, who was in charge of the test bureau there, is working with me now.
Experience in engineering and work in the most modern packages is also in demand by SkyWay. The design experience obtained earlier is no less valuable than everything sounded above.
What is the SkyWay project for the team?
Anatoly Yunitskiy shouldered a very heavy burden, and we must all share it. His merit is to create a whole concept of global transport, organized on completely new principles, but this is the philosophical side of the issue. And the technical is as follows: we must not only create the transport of the future, but also build roads for it! Therefore, all those who come here to work should realize that we do not have milk rivers with milk and honey, but rather sugar plantations. But personally, I work only with people whom I respect, and only as long as I believe in the project. ”
More information about SkyWay on the website of CJSC String Technologies: http://sw-tech.by/
Interviewed by Mikhail Kirichenko.
Струнный транспорт против журналистов и ученых (5 August 2018) String transport against journalists and scientists
https://42.tut.by/603396
Струнный транспорт против журналистов и ученых. Как в Марьиной Горке прошел ЭкоФест-2018
String transport against journalists and scientists.
What happened at the EcoFest-2018 in Maryina Gorka
Dmitry Smirnov (5 August 2018)
Several thousand people with flags, balloons and smartphones on selfie-sticks came from Russia, England, Norway, Switzerland and even Colombia with Indonesia, the smell of kebab everywhere, the unbearable heat and, of course, string transport. Yesterday, EcoFest-2018 passed at Maryina Gorka at EcoTechnoPark, where it was told about the future of the ambiguously perceived SkyWay project by Anatoly Yunitsky.
Recall, under the SkyWay brand, Anatoly Yunitsky, General Designer of String Technologies, is developing a high-speed “string transport” project.
According to the engineer, transport modules on steel wheels should move along rails stretched between the supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The transport itself is raised to a height of several meters above the ground.
Engineer promised speeds much higher than in modern trains - up to 500 km / h outside the city and up to 150 km / h - within it. And although the project has been in the active phase for more than 10 years, there is still no commercial model of equipment. Previously, the engineer had already tried to launch his projects in Russia and Lithuania. However, the success of his initiative was not crowned, and in Lithuania, suspicions of fraud were raised against him.
SkyWay is developing due to investments, including individuals from all over the world. Investors are invited to become shareholders of the parent company of the project by purchasing a stake (investment in private equity) and earn in the future by increasing the growth of the company's value.
Accreditation refused
And although representatives of the media could register for the event, our portal was denied accreditation. In the explanatory letter, which, as we were told, was agreed with the management, it was reported that “the company did not have a relationship with TUT.BY”.
“From the very beginning, your publications are distinguished by bias towards the project, once having demonstrated that, you are compelled to keep the style to this day,” an e-mail reported. They also talked about "some readers", who at SkyWay "are inclined to be considered lazy marginals, who can only doubt and are naturally inclined to foul where they live, if they, of course, indicate the vector exactly where to foul."
In the letter we were offered to buy a ticket and attend the event on a general basis. The cost of it, starting one month before the event, is $ 35 (in May it could be bought cheaper - for $ 25). And the most expensive thing would be to visit EcoFest, if you buy a ticket on the spot, $ 100.
Paying 70 rubles via the Internet, I received the coveted ticket. By the way, it turned out to be nominal - at the entrance it was necessary to present an identity document.
Check out at 8 am
From 8 to 10 in the morning from the metro station "Pervomayskaya" a transfer to Maryina Gorka was organized. I got to the gathering place at 7.50. By this time, there were about two dozen buses and minibuses on Pervomayskaya, with about 50 people near it.
The volunteers sent the first arrivals to the minibuses, with full filling, they immediately went to Maryina Gorka. I managed to jump into one of the first, where I got the last place - a reclining chair near the driver.
We're going friends to distant lands,” the elderly woman suddenly started singing after me. “I'm from Peter,” she said when I turned. - The third time in Minsk. A peculiar city, clean, but would not want to live here. I came to the EcoFest because I built a Unitsky technopark.
Peter and Svetlana, sitting next door, also came from St. Petersburg. They reported that they have been investing in the project for several years.
- You see, here, of course, you can quickly make money. But we buy hope! This is our future, we need to help Unitsky in this project. We even feel each other energetically, ”Svetlana said. - Of course, you can earn a little, but it is better to save, so that later went in the future. Unitsky has so many innovations - everything will be shown to you in a technopark - both string roads and a new unique drone.
- Drin! - my first companion interrupts her and laughs at her joke.
I ask why they have come such a long way.
“Shake hands with Yunitsky,” says Peter.
- This is a unique person! - Grandma again intervenes.
“It is interesting for me to see what has changed over the year,” says Svetlana, “to go to the museum that was recently built.”
“We were here in the 16th year, so there was nothing, only trees,” continues the elderly Russian woman. And now so many have built ...
I am telling me that I am from Minsk.
- Oh, here in Minsk is no end. We asked the locals if they knew about this project, so nobody knows! - said Russian woman in surprise.
I explain that some people in our country have the opinion that Unitsky may be a fraud. This causes a strong reaction from my interlocutors.
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! - Grandma exclaims loudly.
“As soon as a genius is born, so many people begin to spread rot, put pressure on him,” Peter says emotionally. - In Lithuania, they also considered him a fraud, a KGB spy. So what? Three years have passed, and the case was closed.
- One and a half million of our money was lost because of this! In the most difficult time for the project - Svetlana laments.
My interlocutors are sure that the “strings” of Unitsky in the future will be replaced by all other types of transport:
- Railway, and especially ground, which pollutes the environment. Immediately, cows cannot graze around the roads, leukemia can begin again, ”says Peter. - And the kilometer of our route is 2−5 million dollars, and asphalt - 50 million.
“This is an approach for the sake of the future man,” concludes his fellow traveler.
I distract from the interlocutors, but with the edge of my ear I hear Svetlana continue to resent the criticism of Yunitskiy. Meanwhile, under the grandmother's songs about the fields, we drove up to the technopark.
"40 years of thinking"
Among the ticket holders there were 2100 rides on the string transport, while there were about twice as many visitors. Svetlana, who was ahead, was lucky. With shouts “I won, I won, thank SkyWay!” She went ahead with a ticket for a unibus - “string” bus.
Luck turned away from me, which means I did not have a chance to ride. Therefore, past the stalls with souvenirs and food, deployed by local merchants, I went to the newly built museum here.
Fortunately, at 9 am there were almost no people in the ecopark. A small room demonstrated the history of SkyWay from 1966, when 10-grader Unitsky received a certificate for his model of a launching platform, until now. All this was illustrated not only with photos, but also with real objects. For example, the inventor's school desk with an inkwell.
The ceiling was decorated with the names of investors (people were actively looking for their own), and one of the walls was a large photograph of Unitsky, near which all were photographed endlessly.
I quickly explored the park. There are only three tracks here - one for heavy transport unibuses with a maximum capacity of 48 people, the second, the fastest, for 14-seater unibuses (“minibuses”), another one — the highest with sagging spans — for 6-seater unicars.
In addition, the same “unique drone” Combo was demonstrated, capable of lifting up to 1,250 kg of cargo, which looks like a small helicopter.
They want to use it according to plan for delivering materials to hard-to-reach places. However, there was no demonstration of the drone's abilities at the EcoFest - “for the sake of people’s safety”, but the young guys were actively launching a small copy of it into the sky.
Next to the helicopter drones, a large field kitchen with pavilions was installed. True, they promised to feed only at 15 o'clock.
In addition to the names on the ceiling of the museum, SkyWay investors got the right to plant their trees in a large garden set up nearby. If it was absolutely accurate, they planted trees for them earlier, and at the entrance investors could take a sign with their last name and, with the help of a gardener, install it near an already planted tree.
In the very center there is a food zone: a platform with improvised chairs in the form of wooden pallets with hay, large screens and speakers.
The food zone mercilessly smelled kebabs that spread throughout the park and lured the international audience inside, and the screens were periodically shown videos about the achievements of SkyWay and Unitsky personally. In particular, they talked about his “40 years of reflection” on his project.
Throughout the entire EcoTechnoPark zone, free Wi-Fi worked (albeit password-protected for some reason), and besides, guests could directly connect a life :) or MTS SIM card on the spot.
Probably the strangest "exhibits" of the exhibition are two human bushes. They took pictures with visitors, and for some reason, they roared and spoke with a strange accent.
Right behind them in the photo - “string bridge” is another invention of Unitsky. Later, he will tell you that his construction is twice as cheap as a conventional bridge. Probably it is, but I would not recommend walking on it to people with a weak vestibular apparatus - the building is pretty swinging.
“Reality,” said the guy from Lithuania who was standing on the bridge next to me and took a selfie on the background of a passing unicar.
"This is exclamation!"
It was 10 am - a time when the first lucky ones could ride on unibuses and unicars. Near the main "station", on the first floor of which the museum is located, a queue has gathered.
"Skyway, skyway, skyway," the crowd chanted, and the trailer started off slowly.
Since I did not get a ticket for the transport of the future, I had to catch the lucky ones at the exits.
Nina Ivanovna from Russia was one of the first to ride a large unibus:
- Great, but it does not go very fast, of course. Has my expectations been met? It is hard to say. Maybe yes. Normal, nice and not hot.
Nearby, in the meantime, they also launched a stringed minibus “minibus” ...
... and high-rise 6-seater unicar:
Vladimir was delighted with the trip to the faster 16-local unibas:
- Exclamation! I liked the smoothness of the course, even if the speed is small - it works in the test mode. In general, cool, impressive. I myself am from Krasnodar. It's far away, but what to do. I come here for the second year in a row to make sure that the money has been invested correctly, not in some MMM. MMM money laid out in his pockets, and this is a living metal, transport.
He was surprised at the controversial attitude towards string transport in Belarus:
- Well, I'm sorry, so it was with many inventors. Ford, for example, was considered a fraud at one time. I invest not in order to earn money, but in order for it all to take place. Earn or not earn, this is a bonus. So far I have invested about fifteen hundred dollars in a project. This is a little, some of my friends have invested much more.
Vladimir liked our country.
- What to say about Belarus. As always, exclamation! Here is neat, neat, clean. Relatives drove us through the main streets of Minsk. Loved it. And Belarusians are our relatives, how else can it be?
"I thought you live in poverty"
- Won Dutch went, - shows the guy standing next to the highway to the girl standing next to her.
Indeed, it was quite possible to hold a competition for the knowledge of flags, since almost all foreigners went with the symbol of their country.
And who just was not there. I personally saw the flags of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Romania, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. In addition, representatives of more exotic countries could be found here - for example, Colombia, Nigeria, Jamaica, Indonesia and even New Zealand.
People seemed to say: "See where I come from." Periodically, international teams wove and began to take pictures. It turned out like this:
I managed to talk to a couple of people. For example, with Cliff, who lives in Wolverhampton, England. He came here for visa-free travel for 3 days and had already managed to walk around Minsk one day before the festival.
- It's not hard for me to come that far. In SkyWay, I invested about a thousand pounds (about $ 1,300 at the current rate. - Approx. TUT.BY). I am absolutely sure that behind this project is the future, SkyWay will develop its network throughout the world. As far as I know, about 40 Englishmen came here to the park.
This is Cliff's first visit to Belarus.
- I really liked Minsk - it is clean, neat, people are very friendly. The only negative is the language barrier, but these are trifles. As far as I understand, your crime rate is very low, but here in England, on the contrary.
Not far from Cliff is another foreigner. This is Cyril from Zurich, Switzerland.
- I invested in SkyWay somewhere one or two thousand euros. Am I right? We'll see (smiles). I can not say that this is the future, but it looks very futuristic. The Internet, too, once did not seem to be the future, but look what is happening now.
I ask how he liked Belarus.
- A very good country. When I was driving, I thought you were living in poverty, but it turned out to be completely different. I am positively surprised. I liked Belarus, and I am glad that I came here.
Almost a rock star
The chief designer and founder of SkyWay, Anatoly Yunitsky, appeared at the EcoFest around 10 am. From now on, I occasionally met him at different points in the park, but each time he was accompanied by bodyguards and a crowd of fans and fans, just like a rock star.
This girl just took a photo with the inventor and now happily reports this to someone via Skype.
As far as I saw, Yunitsky did not refuse anyone to photograph, autograph or answer the question. “The whole world is grateful to you,” I heard the exclamation of one of the fans who had come to a photo session with the designer.
As a result, his communication with visitors was so prolonged that he had to move the solemn speech for an hour, which, however, did not embarrass the visitors who hid under large tents and laid out their dinners there.
By the way, alcohol at the event was completely banned. He could not be carried with him or bought on the territory of EcoFest. For the whole day I have not met a single drunk person in the territory.
Got both TUT.BY, and "Onliner"
And then came the climax. Anatoly Yunitsky to the applause of a crowd of international investors rose to the scene.
The general designer of SkyWay summed up the year by talking about what the company has achieved in the last 12 months. Including he mentioned the development of a super-powered drone (it was not shown to us in action), as well as an electric vehicle for people with limited physical abilities - a unimobile, which can travel on a single charge up to 40 km and where the driver's seat can replace the wheelchair.
At the international exhibition this fall, Yunitsky promised to show high-speed string transport, which can accelerate to 500 km / h. But that's not all.
According to the engineer, even before working with the "strings", he conceived a vacuum transport a la hyperloop Elon Musk. And now we have a secret revealed - work on it is already underway, and in a project called hyper U, SkyWay engineers, it turns out, have advanced much further than the founder of Tesla and SpaceX. However, no details of the gathering have not yet been told.
And then the inventor lamented the fact that SkyWay constantly put a stick in the wheel. First, the Lithuanian authorities, who declared him a spy and a fraud (as he said, he is now preparing a lawsuit against the Lithuanian government), and now the Belarusians.
Yunitsky said that he was skeptical of him both in the government and in the Academy of Sciences, which had twice failed to recognize them as a scientific organization. And they add fuel to the fire - TUT.BY and Onliner.
He said that on these resources “a series of custom-made articles were published, in which SkyWay was called a financial pyramid” and “they called on him to sort it out”. He also recalled one of the offensive comments on the article, which, “probably, the corrupt journalists themselves wrote.” Yunitskiy promised to go further and “file for the“ Onliner ”with the European courts,” which caused applause from the public. The designer stated that because of these publications, designers are not going to work for them.
This moment recorded on video:
Due to the negative attitude of the Belarusian scientists and the government, according to Yunitsky, they have not been given a 21-kilometer piece of land for high-speed tests, although "they received 16 permits."
Therefore, the inventor decided that “Mahommed himself goes to the mountain”, “investors cannot wait so much” and announced cooperation with the government of the UAE, where he will test both the high-speed highway and some other SkyWay elements. That once again caused a storm of applause from the assembled investors.
The designer said that the Arabs liked his project so much that they gave him a piece of land worth $ 750 million for free. On it, he wants to deploy an analogue of Silicon Valley - "String Valley". Construction there will begin in September, they are going to invest more than 10 billion dollars in the project. Already working versions of string transport will be tested at the Arab test site, which will then go to other countries in this region and even to Brazil.
At the end of his speech, Yunitsky uttered ambitious plans. According to him, “the market estimates the company at five billion dollars,” and in the near future they plan to build a blockchain platform on a global scale, which will manage the entire string transport system, and also release its cryptocurrency, which will be provided with SkyWay’s growing assets.
By shouting out with the audience the slogan “SkyWay Build - Save the Planet”, Yunitsky received gifts. The first is a picture of a Russian master, made using 20 types of gems. The designer himself is depicted on it.
And the second he prepared guests-investors from Australia and New Zealand, performing their national dance. It looked unusual:
In the question and answer section, one of the investors from Russia thanked God that Unitsky "could carry his dream 40 years later," and wished that "you win, we win all the courts."
After a couple of hours, the free field kitchen with barley, canned meat and compote opened for SkyWay investors, and I went to Minsk on the first bus under the clockwork chanson “There are berries in buttocks”.
EcoFest is over for me.
Основатель компании подал иск против Литвы на 10 миллионов евро (24 August 2018) Founder of the company filed a lawsuit against Lithuania for 10 million euros
https://42.tut.by/605613
Основатель компании, строящей струнный транспорт, подал иск против Литвы на 10 миллионов евро
Founder of the company building the string transport, filed a lawsuit against Lithuania for 10 million euros
24 August 2018
SkyWay founder Anatoly Yunitsky filed a lawsuit in the amount of 10,043,182.16 euros to the Lithuanian court on August 17. The defendant in the lawsuit will be the Republic of Lithuania, specifically, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the country's Financial Crime Investigation Service. Earlier, in his speech at the EcoFest-2018, Unitsky said that the unreasonable claims of the Lithuanian authorities threw the development of the SkyWay project back 2 years. This is reported on the company's website.
[YouTube photo of Anatoly Yunitskiy at work at the EchoTechnoPark]
Recall, under the SkyWay brand, Anatoly Yunitsky, General Designer of String Technologies, is developing a high-speed “string transport” project.
According to the engineer, transport modules on steel wheels should move along rails stretched between the supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The transport itself is raised to a height of several meters above the ground.
Engineer promised speeds much higher than in modern trains - up to 500 km / h outside the city and up to 150 km / h - within it. And although the project has been in the active phase for more than 10 years, there is still no commercial model of equipment.
SkyWay is developing due to investments, including individuals from all over the world. Investors are invited to become shareholders of the parent company of the project by purchasing a stake (investment in private equity) and earn in the future by increasing the growth of the company's value.
The reason for the claim was the pre-trial investigation begun in 2014 in Lithuania. The authorities were going to reveal signs of illegal financial activity of Unitsky. It lasted about three years and was discontinued a year ago. The prosecutor's office acknowledged that no evidence of the bad faith actions of Unitsky and his partners were found.
The reason for the expulsion of the project from Lithuania was the statement of the Central Bank of the country that the activities of the Yunitsky companies are fraudulent. The businessman’s property was arrested, and the inventor’s family was forced to leave the country and settle in Belarus.
Under Maryina Gorka, SkyWay has built EcoTechnoPark with four types of track structure; a fifth one is already under construction; Four types of rolling stock have been tested and certified; new samples are being tested.
By the way, at the EcoFest-2018 last month, Belarusians were also criticized. In particular, Yunitsky said that he was skeptical of him both in the government and in the Academy of Sciences, which had twice failed to recognize them as a scientific organization. And, according to him, the mass media is adding fuel to the fire - TUT.BY and Onliner.
He said that at these resources “a series of custom-made articles were published, in which SkyWay was called the financial pyramid” and “they called on him to sort it out”. Then Yunitsky promised to go ahead and "file an online application with the European courts."
Струнный транспорт Юницкого "доехал" до Берлина (20 September 2018) String transport Unitsky "reached" Berlin
https://42.tut.by/608709
Струнный транспорт Юницкого "доехал" до Берлина
String transport Unitsky "reached" Berlin
20 September 2018
At the international transport exhibition Innotrans 2018, which takes place at the Messe Berlin exhibition center in Berlin from 18 to 21 September, a high-speed unibus, one of the new transport modules of string transport SkyWay, was first introduced, the group's website reports.
[youtube film of the vehicle presented at InnoTrans 2018]
The novelty is a “six-seater high-speed transport module with unique aerodynamic characteristics close to the theoretical limit: the drag coefficient Cx = 0.06”.
SkyWay promises that the estimated transport speed reaches 500 km / h with an energy consumption in fuel equivalent of 0.93 kg / 100 pass * km. At a speed of 100 km / h consumption will be less than 0.1 kg / 100 pass * km.
The release states that "these figures will be a record for a high-speed low-speed wheeled vehicle."
“String Technologies” also presented an 18-seat unicar on Innotrans 2018, which allegedly went through “the whole complex of tests and certification intended for urban passenger traffic at speeds up to 150 km / h.”
[photo of the exhibition hall]
This vehicle is equipped only with seats, it is “distinguished by an increased level of comfort and safety”. It is claimed that unicar is a “record-holder of efficiency in its class: energy consumption in the fuel equivalent of 0.12 kg / 100 pass * km (at a speed of 100 km / h)”.
Recall, under the SkyWay brand, Anatoly Yunitsky, General Designer of String Technologies, is developing a high-speed “string transport” project.
According to the engineer, transport modules on steel wheels should move along rails stretched between the supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The transport itself is raised to a height of several meters above the ground.
Engineer promised speeds much higher than in modern trains - up to 500 km / h outside the city and up to 150 km / h - within it. And although the project has been in the active phase for more than 10 years, there is still no commercial model of equipment.
SkyWay is developing due to investments, including individuals from all over the world. Investors are invited to become shareholders of the parent company of the project by purchasing a stake (investment in private equity) and earn in the future by increasing the growth of the company's value.
Under Marjina Horka, SkyWay has built EcoTechnoPark with four types of track structure; a fifth one is already under construction; Four types of rolling stock have been tested and certified; new samples are being tested.
At the EcoFest-2018 that took place at the beginning of the month (be sure to read our report), Yunitskiy said that he is skeptical about him both in the Belarusian government and in the Academy of Sciences, which did not recognize them twice as a scientific organization. And, according to him, the mass media is adding fuel to the fire - TUT.BY and Onliner.
He said that at these resources “a series of custom-made articles were published, in which SkyWay was called the financial pyramid” and “they called on him to sort it out”. Then Yunitsky promised to go ahead and "file an online application with the European courts."
У бывшего сотрудника SkyWay со счета исчезли доли компании (16 November 2018) A former employee of SkyWay shares disappeared from his account
https://42.tut.by/615150
У бывшего сотрудника SkyWay со счета исчезли доли компании. Наниматель: "Это крайняя мера"
A former employee of SkyWay company’s shares disappeared from the account. Employer: "This is an extreme measure"
By Anna Ermachenok (16 November 2018)
A former employee of CJSC String Technologies (associated with the SkyWay brand) complained about the disappearance of the company's shares from his account. The company claims that it was an “extreme measure” and threatens the employee with a court for violating the confidentiality agreement.
Year of work and dismissal
Pavel has been working at String Technologies CJSC since the fall of 2015. He held the position of lead design engineer of the KB reinforced concrete products, and after that - the chief designer and head of the department. The specialist was responsible for tasks related to construction. At the end of 2016, Paul terminated the relationship with the company
“Anatoly Yunitsky and I disagreed on how the department and the company should be organized,” recalls the engineer. - I wrote a letter of resignation, I signed it, I left.
The company confirmed this information about their employee, but noted that they were dissatisfied with his work.
“He made serious design errors, which led to disruptions in the schedule of work at the facility and caused substantial material damage,” says the commentary of CJSC “String Technologies”. - This was the reason for his dismissal, although formally he was dismissed by agreement of the parties - the company did not want to exacerbate the material damage to image losses.
More than a million company shares
After the dismissal, Pavel left over 1.3 million shares of Euroasian Rail Skyway Systems Holding Ltd. on the account. They were stored on a virtual platform.
“I didn’t expect much,” he explains. - I did not translate real money into shares, I only ordered certificates two times.
[Photo of a Euroasian Rail Skyway Systems Holding Limited Share Certificate]
Up to a certain point, the shares were displayed on the account of the former employee. In October, the company announced the possibility of selling shares for the earliest investors. You could get a maximum of $ 1,000 for 100,000 shares.
Pavel looked at his own account - but there was nothing there. The receipts of investments were displayed, but there were no charges (Pavel provided the editorial board with screenshots of his personal account). At the same time, no one informed him that the shares might disappear.
“The matter is not even about money, I didn’t hope for anything,” says the engineer. - But the question is how it was done - brazenly and ugly. I have not lost any money. But it seems to me that such a story can happen to anyone who somehow will be unwelcome.
“Deprivation is an extreme measure”
From the commentary of CJSC "String Technologies" it follows that the engineer was deprived of his shares as a "last resort".
- Regarding the shares that were displayed in Paul in the private office, we clarified with Anatoly Yunitsky. He said that Paul was expelled from the SkyWay promotion program. This program involves the transfer of the most active participants in the options project - reserved shares owned by a foreign company UniSky, which they can get at their disposal, provided that their work benefits the development of string transport.
The initiator of such a program is the author of the concept of string transport and the beneficiary of UniSky, SkyWay general designer Anatoly Yunitsky. He personally makes decisions both on the promotion of options and on their deprivation in case of harm to the program participant. Deprivation is an extreme measure that affects only those people who have harmed the project, and extends only to options received free of charge; the rest of the former or current SkyWay supporters retain them in full.
[photo of Yunitskiy making a point]
The company noted that String Technologies CJSC has no relation either to investment activity or to the incentive program. Pavel noted that he had never heard of UniSky before.
"The company will begin legal proceedings"
According to representatives of the company, Pavel should not count on compensation. In addition, the former employer suspected an engineer in providing false media information.
- The company will soon prepare a lawsuit against him and start a trial, because we know that it was he who provided false information about the company to the Onliner Internet portal, which caused reputational damage to the project in addition to the material damage, in connection with which he was fired.
Pavel himself claims that he did not communicate with journalists. Recall that Anatoly Yunitsky had previously been dissatisfied with the work of the Belarusian media and promised to “file an on-line” with the European courts. ”
“It’s possible that Pavel received a reward from Onliner for his slander, who noted for the last two years a whole series of negative and deceitful articles both in my address and in the address of“ String Technologies ”, - writes Anatoly Unitsky “But it seemed to him that it was not enough, then he addressed you, in TUT.BY, knowing that you wrote negative articles about string technologies. Since this unscrupulous employee suffered such a significant damage to the project (so far, its consequences have not been completely eliminated), the company intends to initiate a criminal case against him in order to compensate for the material damage caused to String Technologies and the project investors. Pavel is not.
[photo of one of the EcoTechnoPark tracks]
In addition, the company believes that Pavel violated the confidentiality agreement he signed.
- It says that during the period of its validity and indefinitely after termination, the signatory undertakes not to make public statements about the company, especially false and slanderous, without prior permission and approval of the text of speeches or statements. For that, by the way, within the framework of the Belarusian legislation, punishment is also provided, up to the criminal one.
What is the difference between employee and investor?
SkyWay is developing through investment, including individuals from around the world. Investors are invited to become shareholders of the parent company of the project by purchasing a stake (investment in private equity) and earn in the future by increasing the growth of the company's value.
Earlier, Anatoly Yunitsky reported that the project has more than three hundred thousand investors from 237 countries and territories. How many people invested in the project in our country, the engineer did not know and stressed that “it is prohibited in Belarus”.
The certificate of Pavel looks like the certificates that are received by the company's investors. In addition, the entrance to his personal account and the investor's office were at the same address on the Internet.
[image of another share certificate]
TEXT: Certificates of investors of the project in 2015 looked like this. Photo: rsw-systems.com
Representatives of "String Technologies" assure: the share of real investors can not be alienated.
- It is important to emphasize that Pavel is not an investor of the project and did not invest his personal funds in his development. The shares were reserved on the basis of an oral agreement, the terms of which were violated by him. Unlike the situation with Pavel, the reserved shares of real investors cannot be alienated without good reasons - this is recorded in the documents governing the process of acquiring investment shares in the SkyWay project.
[photo Yunitskiy at EcoTechnoPark surrounded by people]
TEXT: Anatoly Yunitskiy and SkyWay investors. Photo: Dmitri Smirnov
If any of the investors in the personal account no longer receive the acquired investment shares, they are recommended to contact technical support. String Technologies CJSC emphasizes that they have no relation to it either, technical support is located outside Belarus.
Recall, under the SkyWay brand, Anatoly Yunitsky, General Designer of String Technologies, is developing a high-speed “string transport” project.
According to the engineer, transport modules on steel wheels should move along rails stretched between the supports. A string rail is a bundle of prestressed tensioned steel wires placed in a concrete-filled body. The transport itself is raised to a height of several meters above the ground.
Engineer promised speeds much higher than in modern trains - up to 500 km / h outside the city and up to 150 km / h - within it. And although the project has been in the active phase for more than 10 years, there is still no commercial model of equipment. Previously, the engineer had already tried to launch his projects in Russia and Lithuania. However, the success of his initiative was not crowned, and in Lithuania, suspicions of fraud were raised against him. Later, the pre-trial investigation was discontinued, and Anatoly Yunitsky filed a counterclaim against the Lithuanian law enforcement agencies.
Белорусский струнный транспорт добрался до Дубая (2 May 2019) Belarusian string transport reached Dubai
https://42.tut.by/636215
Белорусский струнный транспорт добрался до Дубая
Belarusian string transport reached Dubai
Mohammed Ibn Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, approved the construction of the SkyWay city transport system in Dubai. This is reported in the official Twitter-account details.
[Photo of the Unicar at the EcoTechnoPark]
It also says that "the SkyWay project, the 15-kilometer city transit system, will transport passengers between the skyscrapers in Dubai to 21 stations."
The Dubai Media Office resource specifies that the features of the Skypods project (as SkyWay is represented in the Emirates) include “the unique design of the stations and the presence of supports supporting the rails that extend along the entire path”. In addition, the project "must be harmonious with respect to the Dubai Metro."
VOLGA NEWS Articles - legal actions in Samara
It appears that SkyWay is taking legal action in order to silence critics. Two articles were published in Volga News, the first in May 2017 [65] documenting the way SkyWay was financing investment in fraudulent projects in the region. They were apparently making claims about projects that were going to take place in the region as a part of telephone marketing campaigns to small-scale investors at home. The second article dated 2 March 2018 concerns the litigation taken against the publication which had brought the company into disrepute: [66]. The court however ruled in the favour of the defendant in February 2018. Moreover detailed commentary and confirmation is included concerning the court-case against Onliner.by in Minsk. Translations of these articles will be included below. These verified instances of attempts to silence critics with legal intimidation needs to be mentioned. These are not just threats: these are confirmed legal actions which were brought against journalists
VOLGA NEWS Articles - Telemarketing and Legal Action against Journalists in Samara
Samarans are being dragged into a "high-tech" financial pyramid (1 May 2017) - the article that caused the legal action
https://gid.volga.news/article/437987.html
Самарцев затягивают в "высокотехнологичную" финансовую пирамиду
Samarans are being dragged into a "high-tech" financial pyramid
1 May 2017
Representatives of the company offer gullible citizens to become investors of a dubious project for the construction of string transport, hiding behind non-existent contracts with regional authorities.
[illustration of SkyWay vehicle held up with paper string. A ticket seller says, “in the morning, money, in the evening…”]
It all started about a month ago, when a member of our editorial staff received a call from an unknown number with a proposal to invest their savings in a new transport technology, which "should come to Samara in the very near future." It was about the company Sky Way and the so-called string transport of the overpass type, where electric vehicles on steel wheels are used as vehicles, moving along special rails.
"Behind our technologies is the future", - every call began and ended with this phrase. But as they say, the devil is in the details. The girl operator happily said that the project, in which today it is possible to invest profitably, is almost agreed at the level of the regional government, and they say that the governor gave the go-ahead for the construction of a new expressway, you only need to get 15% of the votes of residents of the Samara region .
"You can go to our site, watch videos about our transport, register in your account, purchase a share in the company, after which your vote will be counted," the call center operator insistently inspired. "And you can invite your friends to our project and you will be rewarded for it. "
After these words, we seriously thought: is it a fraud? Judge for yourself: a certain company that does not have, as it turned out in the process of studying open sources of information, not a single realized project in Russia, collects money from ordinary citizens under the pretext of using them in the form of a public-private partnership. And at the same time uses the well-known network marketing technology! The account for transferring funds from the company is open in the form of a simple e-wallet. But what struck us especially was the courage of SkyWay representatives, who, without hesitating, use the name of the head of the region in their campaigns. By the way, the company’s website even has a video showing the first deputy head of Samara, Vladimir Slastenin, who, as a visitor to the Innotrans exhibition in Berlin, shares his impressions of the “new generation transport” developed by SkyWay.
To dispel doubts, we had to dive a little deeper into the history of the company. It turned out SkyWay is an international network holding, similar to a giant octopus. Its tentacles stretch from Belarus to Russia, Kazakhstan and other post-Soviet countries. At the same time, this structure is divided into three divisions.
The first is really engaged in development and even built a test branch near Minsk, where it occasionally carries out tests. The second is the Sky Way Invest Group, which conducts training in capital preservation and growth, Internet business and personal development. These are the services the company sells to its "investors." And finally, the third link is the regional offices of the Sky Way Invest Group scattered throughout Europe and Asia, which collect money from unsuspecting citizens, without having any licenses for such activities.
In Samara, SkyWay representation appeared relatively recently - in February of this year. Headed his wife Svetlana and Dmitry Bulavin. We visited them and even talked on Skype with their head, Andrey Khovratov, CEO of the Sky Way Invest Group. About what came of this, we will tell in the near future. For now let us just note that in response to our inquiries from the regional government and the administration of Samara, we were officially informed: "We did not sign agreements on cooperation and cooperation with SkyWay regarding the construction of a new type of string-rail transport." Moreover, according to Vladimir Slastenin, before our appeal, he was not aware of the use of his last name in advertising the company's services, this was done without his knowledge.
We will definitely continue to keep our readers abreast of developments around the activities of the Samara representative of the Sky Way Invest Group. In the meantime, we are officially asking the prosecution authorities to get involved in our investigation and give our company a legal assessment.
SkyWay Invest Group "squeezed" 120 million (2 March 2018) - court-case rejected and confirmation of Onliner.by litigation
Sky Way Invest Group "приструнили" на 120 миллионов
2 March 2018
SkyWay Invest Group “squeezed” 120 million
https://gid.volga.news/article/465427.html
On February 9, 2018, the Arbitration Court of the Samara Region rejected the claim for protection of the business reputation of Sky Way Group LLC and Andrei Khovratov, a resident of Sevastopol, to the Volga News information portal, the Volzhskaya Kommuna newspaper editorial board and two of their employees. The plaintiffs requested an unprecedented 120 million rubles, but the court found these claims unfounded.
Photo: Dmitri Burlakov
Offended by the truth
The reason for the trial was the publication of “Widely spread networks”, which was published in the “Volga commune” on April 21, 2017 and on the same day was published on the pages of our online publication. Its author, Alexei Dmitrenko, said that representatives of the Sky Way Invest Group, registered in the offshore zone of the British Virgin Islands, "offer residents of the region to become investors in a dubious project to build a string transport, hiding behind non-existent contracts with regional authorities After a talk with the local representatives of the company and its head Andrei Khovratov, the journalist concluded that the principles of the work of entrepreneurs are similar to the financial pyramid. This opinion extremely outraged the heroes of the publication, and on September 7 they filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Court of the Samara Region.
The claim of Sky Sky Group LLC stated that the author of the article, as well as its publications, distributed information that allegedly did not correspond to reality. Also, the claim was applied to the calculation of the losses incurred, which consisted of the allegedly lost profits and non-pecuniary damage incurred personally to Andrei Khovratov. As stated in the statement, he was forced to "make excuses to relatives, friends and acquaintances, to partners and customers, to strangers, which eventually led to nervous feelings, nervousness and periods of insomnia." Each claimant requested compensation of 60 million rubles.
For the words answered
So what exactly did the claimants not like? We list the most fundamental points. For example, the subtitle of the article: "Samartsy are being dragged into a new" high-tech "pyramid." This phrase, according to the offended side, cast a shadow on the company, equating its activities to fraudulent. For the same reason, the following statements were taken out of context in the lawsuit: "We seriously thought: is it a fraud?"; "The account for transferring funds from the company is not opened in the bank, but as a simple electronic wallet"; "Sky Way is an international network holding, similar to a giant octopus. Its tentacles stretch from Belarus to Russia, Kazakhstan and other countries."
The editors presented their arguments. In particular, the author of the article objected that in fact in the text the representatives of the company in question were never called fraudsters in an affirmative form. The assumption, or rather, the rhetorical question - does not count, and this was confirmed by a linguistic study conducted by Nadezhda Ilyukhina - doctor of philological sciences, professor, head of the department of the Russian language and mass communication of the Samara National Research University. S.P. Queen. At the same time, Alexey Dmitrenko noted that the signs of a financial pyramid in the activities of the Samara representative of the Sky Way Invest Group are indeed visible. And the main one is that the income of the so-called investors of the company is formed at the expense of subsequent attracted investors.
[indented text]
Already during the trial, a journalist under the guise of a potential "shareholder" attended the Sky Way Invest Group seminar, at which he was unable to understand what kind of innovative products this corporation produces in Russia or, say, in the Samara region. However, his voice recorder clearly recorded the seller’s response that investor money transferred to the company's e-wallets could not be traced. And this was confirmed in court.
Other merits
[end of indentation]
Regional representatives of the Sky Way Invest Group assured Samara depositors that the company has already signed some contracts with local authorities. Among others, in the telephone conversations with potential investors, the name of Vladimir Slastenin was used, who at that time held the position of First Deputy Mayor of Samara.
A video with his participation was even posted on the company's page on social networks and presented in court. The fact stated in the article that Slastenin "was not aware of the use of his surname, this was done without his knowledge," caused outrage among the plaintiffs. Nevertheless, the editors managed to confirm the correctness of their words by providing the court with an official response on the letterhead of the Samara administration.
Well, and, perhaps, the main phrase for which the plaintiffs were hooked - "a dubious project for the construction of string transport." According to Mr. Khovratov, there is no doubt that the string technologies, which, in fact, promotes the company Sky Way Invest Group, will soon receive worldwide recognition. And here, in the process, Anatoly Yunitsky, the general designer of String Technologies, CJSC, inventor and leader of a number of companies with Sky Way in the name, appeared like a little devil from a tobacco box. His lawyers have provided more than a dozen certificates, diplomas, opinions and letters of thanks, talking about the merits of "String Technologies". However, in practice, the plaintiffs could not show at least one actually operating or under construction facility that could transport people or goods on the territory of Russia.
At one of the court sessions, representatives of Khovratov and Unitsky presented a business plan, according to which String Technologies technology was to participate in the construction of the Gagarin Center and the bridge across the Volga near the village of Klimovka. And supposedly it was our article that destroyed these plans. Like, from here and multimillion losses.
In response, the editorial office submitted to the court the official letters of the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Transport and Highways of the Samara Region, which stated that neither Sky Way Group, nor String Technologies Technologies, had any relation to the above projects. And in general it is worth noting that in the contested article there was not a word written about Mr. Yunitsky and his company (although, perhaps, it would be worthwhile to give this person more attention). Nevertheless, all the above phrases in the controversial article, according to the plaintiffs, discredited the honor, dignity and business reputation of the designer. However, the judge Natalya Sharueva, having studied the four volumes of the case, considered these claims unfounded.
Fair verdict
The court drew the attention of the parties to the case that the losses caused by Sky Wei Group LLC by the actions of the defendants were not justified by reason, as Mr. Hovratov did not confirm his 60 million moral sufferings. Meanwhile, in accordance with clause 1 of Article 65 of the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, everyone must prove the circumstances to which he refers in support of his claims.
The court also appreciated the disputed statements of the article from the point of view of the ordinary reader and concluded that the publication is devoted to the “dubious” project of Sky Way, which in Samara invites citizens to become investors in the string transport project. In other words, in the text of the article we are talking about the Sky Way company and the Sky Way Invest Group company, while the court established that Khovratov Andrei Fedorovich, according to information from the Register, is the general director and founder only of LLC "SVIG CRIMP". This LLC does not engage in the construction or development of string transport, and has no relation to technologies that may at least somehow relate to those described in the article. The evidence confirming the fact that it is Mr. Hovratov who is the CEO of the Sky Way Invest Group is not included in the case file.
Thus, the plaintiffs could not submit to the court properly executed documents confirming their authority. And due to the combination of all the above reasons, the lawsuit was denied to them, which fully confirmed the position of the representative of the State Institution “The Volzhskaya Kommuna” newspaper, set out in the response to the lawsuit.
Irina Ryzhuk, lawyer, RBL Law Office:
- In accordance with the position of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, when considering cases of protection of business reputation, it is necessary to take into account a set of circumstances: the fact that the respondent has spread information about the claimant, defaming the information and the inconsistency of their reality. In the absence of at least one of the specified circumstances, the claim cannot be satisfied by the court.
The plaintiffs in this legal dispute did not prove the totality of the above circumstances, therefore, no damages or moral damage could be recovered. In addition, the fact that the defendant spreads information discrediting the claimant’s business reputation is not enough to deduce the damage to business reputation and to pay monetary compensation in order to compensate for the unjustified impairment of business reputation. To confirm the occurrence of adverse effects in the form of intangible harm to the business reputation of the claimant, it is necessary to establish the fact of its formation, as well as the fact of loss of confidence in his reputation.
The plaintiffs could not prove the existence of a direct causal connection between the data being refuted and the consequences for them in the form of causing real damage or loss of profits, as they did not confirm the fact of the occurrence of damages, and therefore there were no grounds for claiming reputational damage.
Alexey Dmitrenko, editor of the "Markets" department:
- The fiasco of the Sky Way project managers in the Samara arbitration is not the first “trial balloon”. Entrepreneurs already have the sad experience of litigation with representatives of the press. But, apparently, failures do not teach them anything. In September 2016, that is, six months before our publication, the Belarusian Internet portal Onliner.by published a devastating material about the string transport of Anatoly Yunitsky under the heading "Ilon Musk - bullshit, carry money to me." As part of their investigation, the journalists acquired a minimal stake, which Sky Way promises people in return for investments in the project. In response, they received a kind of electronic certificate that allegedly certified the right to company shares Euroasian Rail Sky Way Systems Holding LTD (limited liability company). Later, the online newspaper received a reply from the Securities Department of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Belarus. The ministry assured that in the State Register of Securities the shares of non-resident companies, which in some form or another indicate the Sky Way project, are not registered. “As of September 15, 2017, shares of the Sky Way group of companies were not allowed to be placed and circulated in the territory of the Republic of Belarus,” the department said.
Some time later, the author of Sky Way technology complained to the court about the portal and demanded 200 thousand denominated Belarusian rubles (5.7 million rubles at the current rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation). According to Yunitsky, the material contained information discrediting his honor, dignity and business reputation. Claims were more than a dozen, and, indicatively, most of them were subsequently presented as if for a carbon copy in a lawsuit against Volga News and the Volga Commune.
The process went on for a long time; on each meeting, the On-lineer published detailed reports. And in the summer of 2017, the court of the Moscow district of Minsk rejected the claim of Anatoly Yunitsky. Then the academician (as he calls himself) appealed with a cassation to a higher authority, finding the court’s decision unfounded. But the decision of the court of first instance was left unchanged.
I suppose that as soon as it became clear that it’s impossible to make money on the Belarusian portal, Sky Way representatives switched to the Russian media. In particular, claims fell in the address of the Crimean journalist Andrey Luchnikov, the author of the article “Under the Singing of Strings: Has a New Pyramid Come to Sevastopol?”, Published on July 4, 2017 on primechaniya.ru. The editors of the online publication told me that immediately after the publication of the article, they began to receive threats and insults. But, apparently, until recently, all the forces of the lawyers of the group of companies were sent to the Samara Arbitration Court. As it turned out a month ago, the rate did not work.
However, according to Belarusian human rights activists, the purpose of these lawsuits is not so much to win as to have a frightening effect on other media outlets that dare to reveal the truth. At least, this position is held by a lawyer from Grodno, Igor Koyro, with whom I have been in correspondence for almost a year. “They don’t care about the courts, they don’t attend many meetings,” he says. “The new investors will pay all the costs while the Sky Way management rolls around the world and chic in 5-star hotels. Even by the most conservative estimates of the last 3-4 years they’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars in their pockets and aren’t going to stop there. ”
[indented text]
A failed attempt by Sky Wey Group and its director to earn what is called “easy money” will most likely be for some time discussed in higher arbitration instances. However, precedents in similar cases still give journalists hope for the triumph of justice. We are sure that we are right and will continue to publish about the dubious schemes of work of any companies whose activities have signs of a financial pyramid.
According to the second article, although Anatoly Yunitskiy appealed the decision in Minsk, his actions were unsuccessful when the court confirmed its first findings: that Yunitskiy had no reason to suggest that Onliner.by had damaged the reputation of his company. He was obliged to pay all legal costs of the defendant, Onliner.by and the author of the article Sidorovich.
CRITICISM Text
Concerns have been raised about information the company has posted about itself to promote investment. These concerns include the value of its intellectual property,[1] the certification of its technology,[2] awards it has won,[3] excessive pre-order contracts,[4] the validity of its patents,[5] and people/organisations who have invested in the company.[6]
Particular criticism relates to misleading information about proposed SkyWay projects. They claimed, for example, that a SkyWay project “was supported by the authorities in Mogilev” (a city in Belarus) but actual documentation from the city prove this to be untrue.[7] Similar misleading promotion has been documented relating to proposed projects in Russia,[8] the Crimea[9] and India.[7]
In September 2016 the Belarusian news sender Onliner.by published an article critical of the SkyWay Group and the EcoTechnoPark testing facility being built at the time in Marjina Horka.[10] Anatoly Yunitskiy sued them for damage done to his company and his reputation. Yunitskiy lost the case in June 2017 and was required to pay costs incurred by the defendant.[11] He appealed unsuccessfully against this dismissal.[12]
In May 2017 Volga News information portal, the Volzhskaya Kommuna newspaper published a critical article about telephone marketing campaign used for funding in Samara.[8] The company's representative Andrei Khovratov filed a lawsuit against the editorial board but in March 2018 the court decided against the plaintiff.[13][12]
In July 2017 the popular Crimea news sender Primechaniya.ru published an article critical of a telemarketing campaign promoting investment in an unsupported SkyWay project in Sevastopol.[14] Later articles they published include information about legal threats issued by SkyWay employee Andrei Khovratov who represented SkyWay in the Crimea[15] and the unsuccessful litigation in Minsk and Samara.
You could include the Primechaniya.ru articles which raise valid concerns about unsupported proposed projects in Sevastopol. Translations of these articles is included above:
The popular Crimean news sender Primechaniya.ru published a series of articles in 2017 critical of the claims made by SkyWay about a proposed project in Sevastopol.
"A body of published articles exist which are critical of the activities of companies in the SkyWay Group." - What references says just that? --CNMall41 (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
This sentence which is entirely unnecessary has been removed. I think I wrote it to make sense of the new heading 'criticism' and to refer to the different sets of news senders which have published a number of articles critical of SkyWay, i.e. Onliner.by, Tut.by, Primechaniya.ru, Volga News, Geldthemen.de, Burrenblog.de, & Delfi. But this sentence is entirely unnecessary; the references should speak for themselves.–Zachar (talk) 19:36, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
SkyWay use a meeting with the Dalai Lama again and again on the internet to promote interest in the project (see for example this post from 15 May 2017: [67]). The actual interest of the Dalai Lama has been questioned in some of the critical articles mentioned above, such as the Eesti Ekspress article viewable here: ([68]). This article on the Messina negotiations in Italy the Dalai Lama's support for the project is also questioned: "the Dalai Lama 'witnessed' by a photo on Facebook of the Tibetan spiritual authority next to Yunitskiy , which clearly does not prove anything, with a link that leads to a page ... with pictures of dogs (sic)." See the original here: [69]. An additional text could include the following text:
...These concerns include ... interest shown in the project by the Dalai Lama.[70]
Currently SkyWay is claiming 164 billion dollars in pre-order contracts. See these claims here: [71]. Other SkyWay promotion sites suggest 400 billions in pre-order contracts ([http://www.skyway.net.au/). There is absolutely no proof that such pre-order contracts exist, but nonetheless enormous sums are attached to the following projects :
[1] 60,000,000,000 Dollars - preliminary contract for the construction of the intercontinental high-speed track «London - Berlin - Moscow - Tokyo»
[2] 4,000,000,000 Dollars - preliminary contract for the construction of high-speed track «Moscow - Minsk - Vilnius - Kaliningrad»
[3] 80,000,000,000 Dollars - preliminary contract for the construction of high-speed track «Melbourne - Sydney - Brisbane» and further around Australia
[4] 5,000,000,000 Dollars - preliminary contract for the construction of urban high-speed tracks to Dubai and Sharjah cities
[5] 8,000,000,000 Dollars - preliminary contract for the construction of truck in Bolivia from «Mutun – seaport in The Pacific Ocean»
[6] 7,000,000,000 Dollars - preliminary contract for the construction of high-speed track in Vietnam «Hanoi - Ho Chi Minh City»
These are outlandish claims checked on 17 May 2019. They are still posting them today. The Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser enquired about these claims in February 2019 but their enquiries remained unanswered (see the text in the SkyWay in Foreign Countries: Australia heading above). –Zachar (talk) 12:52, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
The following text could be added to the end of the second paragraph on misleading, non-existent projects used to promote investment. Request for an additional citation to a secondary source that mentions these outlandish claims:
...Claims SkyWay makes about the billions dollars in pre-order contracts for the construction of high-speed tracks linking cities around the world[72] have also been disputed.[73][citation needed]
![[31]](https://geldthemen.de/wp-content/uploads/first-skyway-invest-group-investoren.jpg){kind=link}
